


Annika: Part One

by CRebel



Series: Annika Northman [1]
Category: True Blood
Genre: Coming of Age, Drama, Family, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-07 09:39:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 42,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12230289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CRebel/pseuds/CRebel
Summary: "Anytime we're around humans, someone always assumes I'm Eric's daughter. It's the only thing that makes sense in their minds. And I look like I could be his daughter, with my blonde hair and blue eyes. So it's simpler to just let them believe that. Anyway, Eric never corrects them."Eleven years ago, Eric Northman obtained an infant promised to have great psychic ability, intending to mold her into a powerful, devoted asset. But for now, she's only a child, gifted but confused about many things -- such as why there is a man chained up in her guardian's basement.





	1. The Man in the Basement

Disclaimer: I own nothing of True Blood.

...

Dawn is only a couple of hours away, and Fangtasia has closed for the night. This is why I can leave my room without anyone seeing or caring. I have to pass by Eric's office to do so, and maybe he hears me, but he won't care, because all the things I'm not supposed to see are done and gone. Until tomorrow night.

Except there might be one thing I'm not supposed to see. The thing I'm going to see right now. But it might not even be there. He. He might not even be there. The man in the basement. I've had visions that were wrong before. Nonsensical, even. Or irrelevant. Actually, a lot of them are irrelevant to me. But even some of those seem relevant to Eric, which is what matters.

This one would be relevant to both of us, if it's real.

I don't have to go into the club part of the club to get to the basement. I just slip down a hallway, tiptoeing, even though I know it doesn't help much. Sneaking around behind Eric's back, or Pam's for that matter, isn't about hoping they don't hear you, because they always can. It's about hoping the sounds you're making are some of the sounds they're filtering out.

I reach the basement door.

I'm not supposed to go into the basement.

But there's a sudden pull in my gut, a yank, really, that makes me gasp. And then the man flashes through my head again. Alone in the basement, shirtless, black, slumped against a wall, chained to it, and – it's too dark to be certain – I think there's blood on his face.

I squeeze my eyes shut. Then I open them and open the door.

The smell is horrible. Like sewage and something rotting. A dozen concrete steps stretch down before me. The staircase makes a sharp right at that point and finishes itself in five more steps.

_You can still turn back._

There's the yank in my gut again.

I step forward and ease the door closed, as much as I can. It still makes a hard, _loud_ closing noise. And then it's very dark. But there are small lantern-like lights above the door. That's enough for me to see by. I reach for the staircase rail, rusted and pipe-like, and begin to descend.

It only takes five steps for me to see the entire basement clearly. Which is when my chest dips and I have to swallow really hard. There are dim yellow lights along the wall, not doing a lot, but enough for me to see what I wasn't supposed to see.

There's a man sitting in the far left corner of the big concrete room. Shirtless. Chained to the wall by a collar around his neck. Most certainly bloody. And staring at me.

"Oh, shit," he mutters, I think to himself, before straightening up against the wall. "Hey, there, sweet pea. What's yo' name?"

My hands are tight around the rail. Somehow it never crossed my mind that he would speak. His voice is deep, but quivering and breathy. Ragged. There's a hint of the too-nice, condescending tone people use with children, which I would normally immediately dislike him for, but not now. It's not important now.

_Don't answer him. If you answer him, it's real._

"I'm Annika."

_Shit_.

"Annika." He has a thick southern accent, a lot of people around here do, but there's something extra about his. Smoother. "Ain't heard dat one be-fo'. I like it, though. It's real pretty. My name's Lafayette . . . You a human, ain't choo, Annika?"

"How can you tell?" Me, I can spot a vampire a mile away. But I've grown up with them. A lot of humans don't seem to have any sense of it all. Not that I spend much time around humans.

"You kiddin' me? Just look atchoo, girl. You full of life. You don't belong down here, nah . . . and I don't, neither."

I don't say anything. I've noticed something, some sort of pale shape below me, right where I would land if I jumped over the rail, and I'm trying to let my eyes adjust so I can see it.

"But if you ain't a vampire, and you ain't in chains, whatchoo doin' in this place, hm?"

"I live here."

"What? Like a, a pet or somethin'?"

But I don't answer him this time, because I've made out that thing hidden down in the shadows. It's a leg, white as paper. And not far from it, there's an arm. It still has a watch on its wrist. And – the middle part of the body. Why don't I know the word? Torso. That's it.

"Hey, hey," Lafayette says. "Hey, you look at me, a'ight? You talk to me. Little girls don't need to be seein' dat. Hell, I don't need to be seein' dat . . ."

"What'd he do?"

"Silver. Stuck Eric with a piece of it."

"Well . . ." My heart's pounding, but my voice is controlled. "That was stupid." I clear my throat and glare at Lafayette. "I'm not a _pet_. I'm Eric's human."

Lafayette doesn't say anything for a couple of seconds. I can hear his breathing from all the way over here – rough, quick. Panicked. "Jesus . . ." he finally says. "What's he do to you?"

"He doesn't _do_ anything to me. I'm his. He takes care of me. And sometimes . . ."

_Stop talking, Annika. Stop talking right now._

But how strange it is to be talking to a human. To be talking to someone who doesn't know me. I so rarely do that.

"Sometimes I help him make decisions. I'm . . . psychic. All sorts of psychic. Really powerful. Or I will be, at least. When I'm older. Eric bought me before I was even born because he was looking for a psychic as powerful as me for _decades_ and the people he hired to find one found me. Or, my mother. But she was pregnant with me. And she let Eric buy me."

I think Lafayette's eyes have gotten even wider. He starts to say something, stops, then starts again. "That's . . . messed up, Annika. You know dat, right? People ain't s'posed to be sold to other – to no one. Dat makes you a slave. And dat's wrong, you see? What they doin' to you? It's _wrong_."

When Eric's angry, he often slips into a very low, gravel-filled voice that chills me to the bone. That's what I try to do now. "I'm not a slave." My voice doesn't sound as scary as Eric's, but it's not bad. "I'm Eric's _human_. At least until I'm grown. Then he's going to turn me."

Lafayette leans his head against the wall. "Motherfucker . . ." he murmurs, flinching. I watch him breathe for a minute. There's not a single smooth breath.

I can feel his terror. It's seeping into my stomach like an icy fog.

His head turns my way again. "You ain't one of 'em," he tells me. "You hear? You ain't one of 'em. You's one of me. You is a _human_. And you gots to help me, a'ight?" He rolls onto his knees. "You's my only hope, Annika, you hear me? I gon' die, if you don't do this for me. What you gots to do – you gots to get me the key to these chains." He jiggles them for emphasis. They bang around heavily.

I decide to ignore everything he just said. "Why do they have you here, anyway?"

"They – they want information. And I gave it to 'em. I gave 'em everything I know, but yo' boy Eric, he don't believe it."

He should. Lafayette's telling the truth. But I don't say that to him.

"You get me the key. You just get me the key, and I'll do all the rest. Eric, he don't ever gotta know how I did it. He'll never know. You just –"

The door swings open above me, flooding the steps and me with light and all but stabbing my eyes. But that's hardly my biggest problem.

"Well, well, well," I hear Pam drawl. "Annika Northman. You're a little young to be sneaking away to see boys Eric wouldn't approve of, don't you think? I am looking forward to those years, believe me, but . . . come now, puberty first."

"Pam." I talk fast, squinting up at her curving shape, trying to walk the line between speaking like an adult and utterly pleading. "I was just curious. I barely even spoke to him. And I was just about to leave."

"Mm-hmm."

"I was." I run up the stairs to her, as if that might prove something. I can see her more clearly now. Her head is tilted down, one eyebrow is a mile in the air. "I was only in there for a minute, I swear. Please don't tell Eric. Please."

She gives me the driest look anyone, human or vampire or anything else, could ever possibly give. Because we both know how this goes. Given the choice between protecting me or serving Eric, she'll go with Eric every time.

She jerks her head back and moves out of the way. I step out into the artificial light, into the sort-of fresh air. As Pam closes the door behind her, I hear, "Annika, you remember what I said!"

Pam shuts the door soundly and narrows her eyes at me. "What did he say, Annika? This man you barely even spoke to?"

"That he didn't have anything else to tell Eric. And he's not lying, he doesn't."

"Hm. Should probably mention that to Eric, I suppose." She starts off down the hall, but adds, over her shoulder. "You know. When he's done skinning you alive."

...

Eric has a glare unlike anyone else I've ever met. More powerful by far. I don't think it's a vampire thing. It might be a Viking thing. But I suspect it's just something he was born with or something he learned over his one thousand years. A way to cripple the enemy without lifting a finger.

I'm the enemy at the moment.

I sit in a chair in front of his desk. I'm little for my age, so my feet only barely touch the ground. It makes me uncomfortable, and I want to kick my feet, but I also don't want to look childish. So I put all my nervous energy into gripping the wooden armrests, using them to ground me as I work very hard not to break Eric's gaze.

But of course, eventually, I do.

"I like your hair," I say to my shoes.

"We are not talking about my hair right now."

It seems like we should. At least a little. For as long as I can remember, Eric's had hair at least down to his neck, but sometime in the last six hours he's cut it short and slicked it back. I don't know why. But I think it looks very nice. I also think talking about his hair would be a more enjoyable conversation than the one we're about to have.

Which he starts now.

"I have, on numerous occasions, expressly forbidden you from entering the basement." He's using that awful low voice I tried to imitate earlier with Lafayette. "So I am certain you know better."

"I'm sorry."

"And I am not one to tolerate disobedience."

"I'm sorry."

"So what shall we do about this?"

"Eric, I'm –"

_"Do not tell me you're sorry,"_ he growls. My hands constrict on the armrests. "You are not sorry. You are scared. Because you are smart."

I watch the floor. A moment passes. Another, and another. Finally, he speaks again.

"Tell me why you were down there."

"I had a vision."

"Please don't mumble."

I swallow hard and look up. "I had a vision," I say loudly, with almost no tremble in my voice. "I saw Lafayette –"

"He told you his name?"

"Yes."

"Did you tell him yours?"

". . . Yes."

"Do you often do that with strangers? I feel that is something I should know about."

"Of course not."

"Just the strangers chained up in forbidden basements, then?"

I find myself biting my tongue. Literally. I lift my chin and stare back at him.

"You saw Lafayette?" he prods politely.

"In a vision. I saw him, chained up like he was. So I went to see if he was really there."

"You're supposed to come to me when you sense these things."

"This was different."

"How so?"

"Because you were the one who put him there in the first place. There was nothing new to tell you. Except that I knew he was there. Which I couldn't be sure of until I saw him."

"You could have asked me."

"Would you have told me the truth?"

He gives a wistful half-shake of his head. "We will never know."

_I know. You wouldn't have._

"What did he say to you?"

"That he'd told you everything he knew. Which is the truth."

"You sense that?"

"Yes. I'm certain of it." My abilities aren't foolproof by a long shot, but I've been able to detect lies since I was a toddler. From humans, at least. And young vampires. "I think you should let him go."

"Why? You don't know this man. Perhaps he is a child-killer or a serial rapist."

"No. He isn't."

"It seems reasonable to think that my judgement would be better than yours in complicated situations such as these, yes? You are human. You are eleven years old. Your emotions get the better of you. You know this."

"But your emotions never get the better of _you_. I'm sure tearing that man downstairs limb-from-limb was a perfectly level-headed decision."

I don't think about those words before they come streaming from my mouth. I think about them while they're doing so, regretting each syllable more than the last, but somehow I can't make them stop. And then they're out. And the room is far too still.

Until there's a rush of air and Eric is right in front of me, his hands pinning my arms to the armrests, his face inches from mine. I shrink back and take my head as low as it will go. His palms are icy against my forearms. "Do not speak to me like that again," he breathes. "Do you understand?"

"Yes."

He hovers over me for a few more seconds, then lets go and stands. I watch him the way I imagine a mouse would watch a cat. Not a hungry cat. A cat who has just fed, who could take or leave a mouse – a cat who could do anything, depending on how he feels.

But that's not fair. Eric wouldn't do _anything_. He'd never hurt me. Not seriously.

Still, I don't breathe as he makes his way back around his desk, slowly this time. He sighs heavily and sinks into his chair, rubbing his jaw. I think the circles under his eyes are even darker than normal. Suddenly he gives a half-shrug. "Ah. You're not wrong. That man came at me with a bit of silver. I . . . overreacted."

I'm silent. Well, speechless. I can count on one hand the number of times Eric has admitted to me that he was wrong about something. My disbelief must show on my face, in spite of my intentions, because the corner of Eric's mouth tilts up. "It cost me my hair," he says. "Too much blood splatter."

"I really do like it."

He sighs again. "Thank you." He just looks at me for a minute, and I watch him turn serious again right before my eyes. But it's not the same sort of serious. There's no edge to his words this time. Not the kind of edge that could cut me. "Annika, Lafayette could have been someone dangerous. I do occasionally keep dangerous things in that basement. Or at the very least things I do not wish for you to see."

I've seen bodies. I've seen vampires die, exploding into piles of blood and gore. How many worse things can there be? But I say nothing. He seems to read my mind anyway.

"Believe it or not, there are still things I would rather spare you from. That is why I did not bring you in for Lafayette's interrogation in the first place. You should have . . . some semblance of a childhood."

"I'm not a child."

"Yes, you are," he says, not unkindly. I huff out a breath, but let that be the extent of my disagreement. His eyes – so tired, I can't help but notice it now – search mine. "I have a great many things on my mind at the moment, dear. Do I have to punish you for this?"

"No."

"Think about it, now."

"No. I won't go in the basement. I'll do as you say. I promise."

He nods. "Then we will not speak of this again." He reaches for a file on top of a stack of many other files. "Have you eaten?"

"Yes."

"Then get ready for bed."

But right as I'm about to open the door, I'm hit with a thought – _notion_ , that's a more fitting word. It's strong and it's certain and I can't tell if it's my idea or something I'm picking up from wherever such things come from, but it's enough to make me turn back to Eric.

"You're not going to let him go, are you?" There's a sadness in my tone that I had no intention of putting there, that I'm not even sure should be there, because why should I care? Who is Lafayette to me?

_He's a human._

Eric twirls a pen in his fingers. "I said we would not speak of it again." He nods at the door. "Off you go."


	2. Desperate

I wake up with my heart already pounding, which is a terrifying thing to have happen to you. Your brain is still fighting its way out of sleep, but your body is preparing to move, fast and hard, viciously if need be. I push myself off my stomach and onto my knees and go very still, trying to slow my heart, trying to remember what woke me. But I don't have to, because I hear it again. A distant, rhythmic thudding. Like someone is trying to break in.

No. No, _out_.

"Shit!" I kick the blankets off me, stumble across my dark, windowless room, fumble with the doorknob, and race down the hallway and through the door to the bar, and it's only then, when I actually see the tall, muscular, bloody man that I left to rot in the basement beneath us, that I realize this might not be a very safe thing to do.

The bar is to my right, all its contents on display back here, where the bartender is supposed to be. But there is no bartender, no, and not a soul in this giant room, because it's day. Only Lafayette and I are here. And he hasn't seen me, or so I assume; otherwise I don't think he would continue to throw his weight against a locked door the way he is.

 _THUD!_ Lafayette grunts with the impact, but the door just throws him back. All it did was rattle. It was really more like a laugh. Sunlight sneaks in around the edges of the door in little lines of gold. That's part of the joke, too.

"Those are built to withstand vampires," I say before he can do it again. "Young ones, at least. There's no point in trying."

He blinks at me like he's trying to see me better. "Is it day?"

I almost point out the sunlight coming in, but instead just nod.

"Oh, thank you, Jesus –" He bends over for a moment, raising his hands a little. He still has that metal collar around his neck. The thick chain hanging from it grazes the floor. He broke it. How? I don't get the chance to ask. He straightens up, his moment of relief over, I suppose. He's all business again as he takes two quick steps towards me, pointing back at the door. "You know where the key to dat is?"

"I don't know why you keep thinking I have keys to things. I don't get keys to things."

"Annika . . ."

He takes another step towards me, and I find myself inching back, but I correct that immediately. God, I should never have told him my name. That seemed to irritate Eric, and now it irritates me, too.

"You tell me where it is." Lafayette's eyes are wide, and he's close enough now for me to see just how badly they're bloodshot. Which is to say, quite. "Dis is my _life_ we're talkin' 'bout – _Tell me!"_

I let him get too close, and that last part he screamed in my face. I had to jump back. But now I plant my feet and glare up at him. "If I scream, Eric will wake up. If I get frightened enough, Eric will wake up. I've been drinking his blood my whole life, he will feel it. So I do not recommend coming that close to me again."

He started backing up the first time I said Eric's name. Now he runs his hands over his face. "I wasn't gon' hurtchoo, girl," he groans through his fingers. "I just – c'mon. C'mon, please. Please help me. I'm _beggin'_ you. Understand? _Beggin'._ Please –"

"Who the fuck are you?"

I turn around to see a gun pointed at me. Or – pointed too close to me for comfort.

"Ginger!" I shout, ducking away from the line of possible fire. "What the _hell –"_

"You be quiet, I'm _protectin'_ you!" Ginger, Fangtasia employee and dimwitted human, who I entirely forgot could be here, is standing in front of the EMPLOYEES ONLY door, wiggling a gun at Lafayette. Or, actually, she may just be trembling that much.

I should probably wake Eric up.

_He'll kill Lafayette._

He's probably going to kill him anyway.

_But you don't want to see it. You don't want it to be because of you._

"We ain't lettin' you go, if that's what you're thinkin'!" Ginger shouts at Lafayette, who's leaned back on his heels, lifted his chin. He's reevaluating.

Suddenly something shifts in him, and he licks his lips and starts to make his way, easy, easy, towards Ginger. "Well, look atchoo. Not only is you sexy . . . mmm, but you can read _minds_ , too." He edges towards her, his open hand sliding from his bare chest to his belt. "That get me all riled up in my nether regions . . ."

"Don't you try and flirt with me! They told me to pay special attention to the faggot drag queen in the basement!"

"Ginger," I try, speaking past a dry mouth, "Manners."

But it's too late. Lafayette's changed tactics. He crouches a little and bares his teeth, giving in to a scream now. "Oh, skank ass bitch, _you gonna let me up outta here!"_ Sharply changed tactics.

"I do that, I'm as good as dead!" Ginger's starting to cry. "And you know it!"

I pick up her fear. It doesn't give me much of a choice, it stabs into me like a needle. But it opens the floodgates, it seems, because Lafayette's now-familiar terror makes its cold self at home in my stomach. Only now it's even colder than before. It's the kind of cold that's so cold it's hot. Painful.

He's desperate.

And he's going for Ginger.

"Don't you move!" she wails.

"You ain't gon' shoot me, not with dem shaky-ass hands. You ain't got the stomach for it."

I glance at Ginger. Take her in, focus on her as intensely as I can in just one little second. Search her.

"You're wrong," I say to Lafayette, right before the gunshot.

….

"Holy fucker . . . I'm sorry!" Ginger squeals.

I don't see her. My eyes are closed. I'm breathing deeply and trying to think of better, calmer things.

"I'm so fucking sorry!"

I hear her clatter past me in her high heels, going, I assume, to the side of the man she just shot, who is groaning in pain on the floor and possibly dying.

Better things. Calmer things.

Ironically, what comes to mind is Eric smoothing my hair, because that's usually what he does when he's trying to comfort me, but, of course, were he here, he would almost certainly kill Lafayette and, now, quite possibly kill Ginger. Which is why I'm trying to calm down. So maybe by some miracle he'll stay sleeping, and they can stay alive.

_For a while, at least._

I open my eyes.

Lafayette is on his side, clutching his thigh. Blood is flowing over his fingers. There's a particularly bad gush for a second, and Ginger starts screaming. She says she hates guns, she slams it on the counter. Screams some more. I rub my temple.

"Hey! _Hey!"_ barks Lafayette. Well, it's a bark, but there's a crack to it. "I'm the one who got shot! Will you quit screamin' and go get me a towel befo' I bleed the fuck out?"

He wasn't speaking to me – I think he's forgotten I'm here – but I start scanning the bar. "God- _damn . . ."_ I hear him moan. I find a bundle of rags underneath the sink and bring it over to him. "Oh!" Ginger says when she sees. She's positively vibrating, grey tears streaking down her face. She picks at the corner of one rag. "Those are all dirty!"

_"Just gimme the fuckin' towels!"_

I swing my arms away from Ginger and toss the bundle at Lafayette. He mumbles and whimpers as he presses the rags into his leg. "Mmm."His head arches back in a reflexive way, and he presses harder. _"Mmm."_

"What're we gonna do?" Ginger keeps covering her mouth, uncovering it, then covering it again. Her voice is getting higher and higher. "What're we gonna do? What're we gonna do?"

The breath I take in is shaky. The breath I let out is not. I roll my shoulders back, put on my best indifferent expression, and send it her way.

"We?"

I mean to look at Lafayette but find I can't, so I just spin on my heel and head for the EMPLOYEES ONLY door. "Clean up your mess. I'm going back to bed."


	3. Long Night

Coming through the EMPLOYEES ONLY door that evening, I hear, "Oh, good. Sleeping Beauty woke up," before I'm two steps in. And then a rag hits me in the chest. "Make yourself useful." Pam is standing at the bar, shuffling through receipts in front of a calculator. "Wipe down the tables."

I almost point out that I haven't even had breakfast yet, but Pam's expression makes me think better of it. I walk out to the tables, still sticky with spilled drinks and human grease. "Where's Ginger?" I ask as casually as I can manage. She usually does the clean-up.

"Oh, I had to send Ginger home." Pam says this like she's talking honey, and her smile is just as sweet, which is how I know she's ready to bite. "I don't know if you heard –" Yes, here's the shift – "but she was involved in a _shooting_ today." She gives me a pointed look. Well, glare. Everyone in my life has an excellent glare.

"Why didn't you glamour her?"

"Because her mind is one glamour away from being cracked like an egg. And scrambled." She enters some numbers into the calculator, her fingers a blur. "I'm saving that time for something good."

I move from table to table, paying very little attention to what I'm doing. Sometimes talking to Pam, or Eric for that matter, is like a game of chess – which Eric forced me to learn, and which I hate. Conversations take more strategy than they maybe should. "Is Lafayette dead?"

"No. Ginger put him in Eric's office last night. He's still there. No point in moving the little jailbird until Eric decides what he wants to do with him."

That explains why I woke up with that coldness in my belly again. I thought it was leftover from the day, but I was feeling Lafayette right in the next room. I need to pay more attention to these things. "Where's Eric?"

"Left at sunset. He was gone before I got up."

"Where?"

"Business."

"Is he going to kill Lafayette?"

A misstep. Pam rolls her eyes, drops the receipts, and presses her palms flat against the bar. "You gotta stop this," she says flatly.

"Stop what?"

"Caring. About humans. About _strangers_. This is exactly why Eric's tried to keep you away from them. They're bad influences."

"I don't care about Lafayette. He was bleeding on the floor last night with a bullet in his leg and I walked away!"

"Because you didn't care?" Pam picks up the receipts again. "Or because you cared too much?"

I don't even know what that means, but it makes me angry. I wipe down two more tables and then say, "Can I go now? My tutors are coming tonight and I haven't eaten anything."

Her eyes flicker up. "Fine."

But as I move around her, tossing the rag on the bar as I go, she calls after me. "Save yourself some trouble, and don't even think about going into that office. Eric's been under a lot of stress lately, and he's not going to have the time or patience to be sensitive about it if you step out of line."

I back into the EMPLOYEES ONLY door and send a glare of my own back at Pam. "I don't give a _damn_ about Lafayette."

Pam's lips curl. "Watch your mouth. But good job." She turns back to the calculator. "That was almost believable."

. . . . .

My tutors come shortly after Fangtasia opens. The music is muffled but easy to hear, and the walls sometimes pulse in time with the beat of a song. I've only seen it in person a few times, the party that occurs nightly in my home. Eric doesn't like me to be out there.

I currently have two tutors, one for French and one for math-and-science. They come three times a week and they're both vampires. I've had human teachers before, but vampires are more convenient for everyone, since they have no problem coming to me at night and they find nothing odd about my belonging to Eric.

The math-and-science teacher comes first. He has a name, but there's no point in remembering it. Eric rarely lets me keep the same tutor for more than a few months. He used to do the same thing with my nannies. I asked him about it once. He said it was because employees get complacent after a while, but I didn't entirely believe him.

Anyway, I'm not a good student tonight. I can't get Lafayette out of my mind, can't get his feeling out of my body, can't stop staring at the wall separating him from me. Once, I even feel a sting in my leg. But that could be my imagination, I suppose.

The math-and-science teacher leaves after two hours. The French tutor shows up and leaves after one. Then I'm alone in my room, listening to a distant party, with Lafayette next door, suffering, and several hours left in the night.

I'm used to spending time on my own. I'm good at it, for the most part, but sometimes it gets difficult. Eric knows this and he does what he can. I was never short on toys, back when I was young enough to play with them. Now, Eric buys me any book that I want and plenty that he thinks I need. That's why I no longer have a history tutor, actually. Eric's taken over all that. Essentially, that just means he has an extremely long list of books for me to read. Which I don't mind. When he has time, he asks me questions about them, usually just my opinion on things, and I really, really love that.

Right now he has me reading Plato's _The Republic._ He has me read a lot of philosophy, which I don't entirely understand, because philosophers are obsessed with human existence and what it means, and that shouldn't matter to us. Except that Eric says it should. He says it helps make sense of humans, and that that will be of use to me in the future.

So that's how I spend my night. Sitting in my beanbag chair, reading the musings of a long-dead human, sometimes tapping my finger when a good song comes on in the club, and trying as hard as I can to ignore the chilly stirring in my belly constantly reminding me that Lafayette is _right over there._

And eventually, the music stops. And it's another night gone for Fangtasia. I give it another half-hour, and then I toss Plato aside and stand up to go get something to eat – I forgot to have lunch – which is when something locks into place in my chest and I know, with certainty, that Eric's back.

That's never happened before, with him. I can usually tell when Pam's around, and sometimes when a strange human is around, but sensing anything about Eric is still an irregularity. So this is pretty cool . . .

Except that now he'll deal with Lafayette.

And in a way, I'm almost relieved. No, I'm certainly relieved. I want Lafayette out of my life. I don't want to have to think about how I don't want him to die. And that's how this ends. It must be. He tried to break out of here, Eric won't stand for that.

So just let it end, then.

He's nothing to me.

I lower myself back into my beanbag chair. Through the walls I can hear conversation. I can't make out any words, but it's Eric's voice, and once or twice, Pam's. And a low, barely-audible one that is either Lafayette's voice or purely my imagination.

The screaming isn't my imagination, though. And that starts after just a couple of minutes. And of course it's Lafayette doing the screaming.

I sit and listen. His terror tries to take over my body, but I push it away. I can't make it disappear, but I can make it clear to myself that his fear isn't mine. For the most part. If I concentrate.

And finally, finally, the screaming drifts off. And so does the terror.

My hands are tight together, my fingers tangled up. I don't feel like untangling them.

_It's for the best._

I don't know how long I stay like that. I wish I could say it's a shorter time than I suspect it is. But I'm drawn out of it before it gets ridiculously, shamefully long. There's a two-rap knock on my door. Eric. Pam would just come in.

"Yes?"

He enters. I have to look twice at him, because I'm still not used to his new hair. He shuts the door behind him and puts his hands in his pockets. In the beanbag chair, I'm basically on the floor, so the extent to which Eric towers over me is driven entirely home.

He studies me for a moment. Then he gestures at the wall dividing me from his office. "You heard that?"

I shrug. "Yeah."

"How do you feel about it?"

"He was nothing to me."

"No need for past tense. He's still alive. Not lively. But he still has a heartbeat." The table I have my lessons at is to his right. He grabs one of its chairs, lifts it over to the bean bag chair, and sits facing me.

"Why would you leave him alive?" I ask.

"Because I am not entirely sure he has nothing more to offer me."

"I told you he's telling you the truth. Why don't you believe me?"

"I do believe you. But you have a sixth sense you were born with. I have one from being alive for a thousand years. He might not have anything more to tell me, but there is something about him that makes me reluctant to let him go. I would prefer to wait, and explore what that might be."

I see Lafayette, on the floor, grabbing his leg, face tight and sweat-soaked as blood streams from his thigh.

"Are you going to give him your blood? For the gunshot wound?"

"That's quite a commitment to make."

So, no. I rake a hand through my hair. "I can feel him. I've felt him all night, right there, in your office. His fear. It's . . . annoying."

Eric sighs. "Pam's moving him back to the basement. That should help."

I nod. I never felt Lafayette in the basement. I had a vision, but that was just a few quick seconds, not the drawn-out torture that has been my night. So it'll be better. I can forget he's even there, for . . . as long as Eric keeps him down there.

I meet Eric's eyes. "Why are you talking to me about this?"

"Because you are of great value to me and I worry about you."

"You don't need to worry about me. I'm strong."

"I know."

"Why do you look so tired?"

"That's not a polite question, little one."

"Nonetheless," I say, which makes him smile ever-so-slightly. He thinks about things for a moment, and he has a word on his tongue when there's a barely-there bang from somewhere else in the club, followed by a distant but screamed _"Eric!"_ in a voice I can't place.

Eric is standing in my open doorway the next second, pointing at me. "Stay here." Then he's gone with a _whoosh._

And I'm left sitting in my beanbag chair, utterly confused, my legs tensed and ready to spring but without anywhere to go, my palms sweating, my pulse racing, feeling totally, disgustingly helpless.

The vision comes on gently, like a stamp carefully pressed onto paper, putting a clear picture in my head: A woman, blonde and drowsy – no, not drowsy, half-unconscious, and pale. Her head is at a weird angle, and because of this, it takes my mind a second to recognize her. Sookie Stackhouse. The telepath.

"Oh, _damn it."_


	4. Sookie Stackhouse

Sookie Stackhouse is pretty. Not pretty in a way I'm used to, though. Pam, the dancers that come here, they're always painted with thick lines and bold colors and they look like art. Sookie isn't like that. She has some sparkles on her eyelids – I have a good view, since she's unconscious at the moment – and on her lips, but it all just makes her look a bit glowy. Like the dolls I had when I was little.

We're out on the floor of the bar, Sookie and I. She's on her stomach on a couch. I'm in a chair. I don't know how long I've been here – probably an hour. So it's around three in the afternoon, early for me to be awake. Silly of me. I need the sleep, I'm tired. But I woke up when I did, and I got up when I should have rolled over and gone back to sleep, and I got dressed.

Because _Sookie Stackhouse_ is here. Am I supposed to ignore that?

She's like me. Not many people are like me – no one that I've ever met.

_Actually, she's better._

No. No, not better. Older. _I'm_ better.

After Eric rushed out of my room, I stayed there, like he said to. I stayed there even after the woman's screams – Sookie's screams, I know now – began. Eventually, just before dawn, Eric returned and gave a brief explanation. Sookie had been attacked by something. He didn't know what. Neither did Bill Compton, who was the one who brought Sookie here, the one who had shouted Eric's name earlier. He's the vampire Sookie belongs to. He was there when Sookie had the whatever-it-was slash into her back, apparently quite badly.

Vampire blood wouldn't heal her. Which is not something I thought could ever happen.

Eric called Dr. Ludwig, an angry old woman he keeps on hand for situations like these. I've met her three times – twice for shots, once for the flu – and I hate her almost as much as she hates Eric and Pam. But, no matter how she feels about vampires, she's a good doctor. At least according to Eric. And tonight she did something, fixed Sookie just enough – Eric didn't go into detail about exactly what she did, if he even knew – for Bill Compton's blood to finally work, so Bill gave Sookie his blood, and she started to heal. And she _is_ healed by now, almost definitely. I can't say for certain. Someone put her in an oversized Fangtasia t-shirt to replace the one I'm guessing was shredded.

So. Eric called Ludwig and, I imagine, paid her to help this woman. This human. And he let her spend the day here. Even gave her a shirt. A _human_.

I'm the only human he's ever treated that way.

But, before Sookie, I was the only human in Eric's life with powers.

I pull my legs into my chest, squeeze them, and dig my chin into my knees.

. . . . .

_"But you don't need her, Eric, I've told you –"_

_"You've told me that no one I suspect of guilt is guilty. Therefore, I am seeking a second opinion."_

_"None of them is guilty! I'm not wrong!"_

_"You are taking this far too personally, Annika."_

_"That's not it!"_

_"Then why are you crying?"_

_"I'm – Because I'm_ angry!"

 _"Because you are taking this_ personally _– Do not walk away from me, girl. Come here . . . I will indulge this one more time, and no more, so listen well. My bringing in Sookie Stackhouse is not a reflection of your worth to me."_

_"Of course it is."_

_"Let me speak. You know very well that you have only scratched the surface of your abilities. Most of them have yet to manifest. In time, I expect your powers will be far superior to Sookie Stackhouse's – and possibly to anyone else's, for that matter. And then, I assure you, I will rely on you alone for matters such as these. But until then, there will be times when I look elsewhere for assistance, and you are going to have to accept that."_

_". . . None of those humans took the money, Eric –"_

_"Enough."_

. . . . .

That was the conversation Eric and I had a few weeks ago, just hours before I met Sookie Stackhouse. Someone was stealing money from the club. Eric thought it was one of the humans working for him, the accountant or the dancers or Ginger, but I spoke to them all and none of them were lying about not taking the money. Eric didn't believe that, even though it was true, and so he called in Sookie, and because she can read minds – entire thoughts, not just feelings or emotions or intentions, entire _thoughts_ – she was able to figure out from Ginger's mind that Longshadow had been stealing the money. And then Longshadow attacked Sookie – I was there – and Bill Compton killed him. He exploded into a mess of flesh and blood.

. . . . .

_"I told you it wasn't one of the humans."_

_"Yes, dear, I know you did."_

. . . . .

I never liked Longshadow, not from the minute Eric hired him, about six months ago. He only spent the day at Fangtasia on occasion, but I could never sleep well when he did. I avoided him at all costs, and I told Eric more than once how he made my skin crawl, but Eric said that was just because Longshadow had done many bad things and I wasn't used to him yet. Eric's usually right about these things. He wasn't this time.

Anyway, that was how I met Sookie Stackhouse. Bill Compton, too, but Sookie was the one I was interested in. She's the only person I've ever met with abilities anything like mine.

_Abilities better than mine._

_Just for now._

I hated watching her that night. Talking to each of the humans and reading their minds as easily as if they were books. Relaying what they thought to Eric, and Eric taking her at her word.

And her being so kind throughout it all. To the humans she spoke to. To me. It was all too strange for me to follow, especially because it was all genuine. I felt it from her – the _good_. Like I can feel it now, even with her unconscious. It's like coming up for air when you didn't even know you were under water. It's like – well, one winter years ago, on Eric's farm in Oland, I went for a walk in the day, even though I wasn't supposed to, and I got caught in a snowstorm in the middle of the forest. Eric found me almost the minute night fell, terrified, freezing, and walking in the wrong direction. He took me back to the house, wrapped me in a blanket in front of a fire, had me drink hot tea, until the shivering finally, finally stopped and I felt warm again, and that, that moment of warmth and safety, is what I feel when I try to read Sookie Stackhouse.

So it should be easier to like her.

She's waking up.

I straighten in my chair and try to look older as Sookie makes a sort of low whining noise and pushes herself off the couch a little, looking to the left and away from me first, then to the right and straight at me. Her eyebrows pop up a little, but that surprise only lasts a second. It's replaced by a smile. "Annika. Hi."

"Hello." I clasp my hands in front of me. "You're at Fangtasia. Something attacked you and Bill brought you here. Do you remember?"

She brings her feet to the floor, carefully. "Yeah . . ." She reaches one hand around herself and under her shirt. "Feels as good as new."

"Vampire blood will do that."

She slows down for a moment and blinks twice at me. "Guess you would know," she says, but she struggles to hold onto her smile.

She doesn't like that Eric has me. I've known that since the second I met her. I stare at her, until finally she stands, and, after glancing around the bar, walks quickly to a mirror on the wall to my left. "Do you know – Did Bill leave?"

"No. He's in the back. We had a spare coffin." I watch as she turns her back to the mirror and pulls her shirt up to examine her pale, flawless skin. "Eric says he doesn't know what attacked you. Which is remarkable. Considering how old he is. Everything he's seen."

Sookie lets her shirt fall back in place and smooths her hands over it. She looks too serious for a moment – it's not what her face is supposed to look like. It doesn't match that glowing warmth she gives off. But now – damn, it's like flipping a lamp on – she's smiling at me again, her eyes are bright and focused on me. _"'Remarkable,'_ she repeats. "You don't talk like most eleven-year-olds, do you?"

"I wouldn't know. I haven't been around any other eleven-year-olds recently."

"Huh." She settles back on the couch across from me, crossing her legs, leaning over her knees a little. "So you don't have . . . any friends your own age? At all?"

"No. I don't want any. Eric says I wouldn't get along with them. I'm smarter than they are."

"Well . . ." Her eyebrows are close. She tilts her head. "That sounds kinda . . . lonely."

I stay quiet. Sookie can't read my thoughts. I'm like a vampire that way. So she doesn't get to know about any of my feelings. Not if I don't want her to.

But I can know about hers, if I want. Her feelings, her intentions – kind of, if I know how to interpret what I'm reading. Sometimes that's difficult. It isn't with Sookie. Past all the warmth and light is more warmth and light. She doesn't have an interior – that's not right. Ulterior. She doesn't have an _ulterior_ motive, not this second. She's simply being kind.

It makes me uncomfortable.

"It's not lonely," I say. "I have Eric. And Pam . . . well, sort of. I have my tutors. And Eric usually has Ginger take me somewhere once or twice a week, in the afternoon, if I go to bed early enough the night before. The mall. Museums, a few times. The park. I see people . . . I prefer vampires. Humans are simple and petty. No offense."

"Maybe you haven't met the right humans. Doesn't sound like you've met many at all."

"Eric doesn't like me to," I snap, then look at my hands. "He knows what's best for me. He always has."

There's a quiet moment, and then, "That sounds like something you've heard _him_ say."

"I'm eleven years old. Are you trying to tell me I shouldn't listen to my guardian?"

"I – no. I just . . . You've clearly had a very unusual upbringing, is all. I don't really understand it."

I could say the same about her upbringing. Well, what I assume was her upbringing. A mom and dad. Maybe some brothers or sisters. A house in a neighborhood. A dog or a cat. A big school with lots of kids. Bikes. Playing in the sunshine . . .

_Stop it._

"I wouldn't change it," I say, tangling my fingers together, my mind already rushing to find something new to say, some way to change the subject. "Eric says you can't be glamoured."

"No. Neither can you, right?"

I shake my head. "And you can't hear my thoughts?"

"No. You're quiet, like a vampire. It's nice."

"I would imagine so," I murmur, and for a second, I feel the freezing echo of Lafayette's fear in my chest. I couldn't help but feel it, when he was close by. It wasn't as bad as if I had tried to read him, if I had been reaching out and searching for it, but still. It wasn't pleasant.

And what about when I'm older? When I'm stronger? Will I be able to shut other people out? I'm not like Sookie. Vampires aren't out of play for me. They're harder to read, sure, but when I'm grown, when I'm more powerful, that may stop being true. What if I can never be around people without their emotions slamming against mine? Or what if I become telepathic, like Sookie –

"You're awake!"

I jump at Ginger's voice, and as Sookie rises to greet her, I release one hand from the other. I was nearly mangling it. I take a deep breath. _Don't be such a child._

"Thought I heard you," Ginger says behind me. "I made you a two-top sandwich." I turn to see her hand Sookie a mound of brown goo on a paper plate. "Peanut butter and chocolate syrup."

"That's very . . . thoughtful, Ginger."

"I would have made you somethin' a little more fancy, but most of the food around here is Annika's. I can't touch that. It would mess up the system."

Sookie gives me a questioning look. "A chef Eric hired makes fourteen meals for me every week," I explain. "Seven lunches and seven dinners. We keep them in the freezer."

"Such a lucky girl, havin' it all mapped out like that," Ginger says. She shakes her head at Sookie. "That's the thing about bein' with vamps, ain't it? You always forget to eat." She walks around Sookie and to an empty bottle on the table close by. "I've lost thirty-seven pounds since I got this job."

Sookie eyes Ginger as she begins to go from table to table, picking up the leftover trash from the night. "Do they make you stay here every day?"

"Well, sometimes I just come in for deliveries. Sometimes I take Annika out somewhere for a few hours, you know, get her a little sunlight?"

She has a bad habit of talking about me like I'm not in the room. Pam is greatly amused by it – or, rather, by the fact that it annoys me so much. She's actually started up conversations with Ginger _just_ so they could talk about me like I'm not in the room.

"But these days," Ginger says, "I've been comin' in for –"

I swing my head towards her just as she stops dead, because I know what she was going to say. Maybe it's a psychic thing, maybe not, but I'm certain she was about to mention Lafayette. But she caught herself. She caught herself, so it's alright.

Only, Sookie's staring at her, waiting for her to continue. After a moment that's much too long, Ginger forces a laugh and waves a hand. "Never mind alla that . . ."

But Sookie still stares, and there's something uncomfortably familiar about that stare, and then I remember what kind of person we're dealing with. And why she should not be staring at Ginger like that.

I jump from the chair. "Ginger, I need to talk to you –"

But Sookie interrupts. _"Lafayette?"_

And in that second the warmth I feel in her turns to fire, so much so that I pull my mind away from her as much as I can. I even take a step back.

_She's not what she seems. Not entirely._

Sookie moves closer to Ginger, who tries to edge away as she balances the empty bottles and glasses filling her arms. One cup falls to the floor and bounces with a hollow sound before rolling off. "Why would Eric have Lafayette in the basement?" Sookie asks. Demands.

Ginger glances at me, looking for help, I suppose, but I'm at a loss. I didn't even know Sookie and Lafayette knew each other. Did Eric?

"I-I just work here . . ." Ginger tries to hurry around Sookie, but Sookie blocks her way, and then, before I know what's happening, Sookie's racing to the bar.

_I could wake up Eric. This wasn't my fault. I could wake him up. I could –_

But I take too long to think, and before I can make a solid decision about anything Sookie is ducking behind the bar and reappearing with a gun, which she aims straight at Ginger, who was halfway to the exit.

_How did she –_

Ginger must have thought about it. She thought about _that_ of all things, and now I'm within ten feet of a loaded, pointed gun for the second time in two days. But Sookie looks far more comfortable with the gun than Ginger did. "Take me to him!" she shouts.

And Ginger, being Ginger, starts to scream.


	5. Dallas

A few hours later, only a little after nightfall, I step into the doorway of Eric's office to find myself looking down at Lafayette for the third time. Feeling his fear for the . . . more than the third time. Only this time it's softer. It's melting.

He's on his side on the floor, his head resting on the concrete, and his breathing is heavier than it should be. But I don't see chains. And Sookie and Bill Compton are both standing over him, neither of them looking happy, but not particularly worried, either. Were it not for Eric crouching over him, I imagine Lafayette would be feeling great about things.

Eric's turned slightly away from me. I see his hand reach out, see his finger brush over Lafayette's chest. "I'll see you around, I'm sure," he says pleasantly.

"Oh, don't bet on it, baby," Lafayette pants. "I'm retirin'. I'm done with you crazy-ass fuckers."

I hear Eric huff out a breath, an almost-laugh, before he rises. He notices me standing here but says nothing. I drop my eyes to Lafayette again to find him looking up at me. I wait for him to say something, but he doesn't. So neither do I. What would I say? I'm sorry? I'm not, I didn't do anything wrong. Goodbye? No. We're not friends.

So I look back at him in silence until Bill Compton gathers him up from the floor and carries him past me. Sookie follows, after staring at Eric for a long moment. I can't see her face, but his has a faint smile. Then she spins so fast her hair whips around her like a cape, and as she passes me her eyes touch on mine and the fire there seems to calm, but she doesn't say anything or stop, and then she's gone down the hallway after Bill.

"Lafayette is a friend of Sookie's." Eric is sitting on the front edge of his desk. I rest my head against the doorframe. "She agreed to assist me with something in exchange for his release." He lifts an eyebrow. "I told you he had more to offer me."

He picks up a pile of mail from his desk and, standing, begins to shuffle through it. I look down the now-empty hallway, then back to him. "What's happening in Dallas?"

"I am establishing a prison colony for eavesdropping children." He glances up. "Perhaps you know one."

"I didn't . . . _plan_ on . . . overhearing. But my room's next door. And Sookie's voice carries."

Eric lowers into his chair, giving me a dry look. I shrug a little.

Eric is sending Sookie to Dallas, Texas. I think Bill's going, too – I didn't hear that part entirely. I also didn't hear exactly why Eric wants Sookie in Dallas.

Eric tosses the little pile of mail back on his desk, and since it doesn't seem like he plans to answer my question any time soon, I ask another one, walking into the room as I do so. "Are you going to Dallas?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Tomorrow night. Perhaps the night after."

There's a couch pushed against the wall to my right and Eric's left. I settle myself on the end of it that's closest to him, crossing my arms on the oversized armrest. "And . . . you need people read. Listened to. That's why you're taking Sookie."

"Annika, I am not having this conversation with you again."

"No, I – I wasn't going to say you shouldn't take her, or that you should take me instead of her. I know . . . I know she can do things I can't. Yet. But are you working with just humans? Or with humans and vampires? She can only read humans. I can read both."

"You want me to take you to Dallas."

"I think it makes sense to take me to Dallas," I say, because that sounds more mature. "Definitely if you're working with other vampires."

"We both know you still have difficulty reading vampires, little one."

"Well, yes, but I'm getting better every day. Young vampires are practically as easy as humans. But Longshadow wasn't young, and I knew you couldn't trust him. I can actually read Pam pretty well now, and I can even sense things about _you_ sometimes. I felt it when you got home last night. That's never happened before."

Eric is tapping his desk with one finger. His eyes are off to the side. He's thinking. Am I actually convincing him?

"And Sookie might be able to read people's minds," I continue, trying to keep the words from rushing out, "But you don't know her well enough to trust her, do you? I can read _her_. I can tell you if she's lying. Or hiding something." I press my lips together, not sure if I should keep searching for reasons or if I've pushed hard enough already. Eric's face gives nothing away. "Eric, this is what you have me for, right? To help you with things like this?"

"You do not know what sort of thing this is."

"Well . . . Am I wrong?"

He sighs. He keeps thinking for a while. I wait. Finally, he meets my eyes. There's a hint of something bright inside his. "I will _consider_ taking you to Dallas with me."

I pull my lips into my mouth to hide the smile it's trying to make.

"But I am making no promises. If I decide it is better for you to stay here, the matter will be settled."

"Of course."

Eric nods. He looks at me for a moment, and then he jerks his head. "Go read something."

I push off the couch and head for the door, but he calls after me, "And I want you in bed early. You are the one who looks tired tonight."

"That's because your employees keep screaming and pointing guns while I'm trying to sleep."

That makes him grin, which makes me happy.


	6. Summoned

Pam comes to my room the next night when I'm with my French tutor. She swings the door open without warning, like always, and sets her sharp gaze on him, a little overexcited vampire who claims he knew Marie Antionette but is lying and who Pam could split in half with one well-aimed, high-heeled kick. "You. You're done for the night." Her eyes slide to me and she smirks. I'm sure I've seen Pam genuinely, simply smile at some point, but I can't remember it. "This one already knows more words than I'd like."

My teacher gathers his things and slips by her, muttering pleasantries in a high-pitched tone, and when he's gone Pam kicks something into my room. A small blue suitcase. It slides across the concrete and bumps into one of the legs of the table, making my notebook and pencil jump. "Get packing," Pam says. "Eric's in Dallas, and he's summoned you."

Something inside of me leaps upwards. "What? When did he go?"

"Earlier tonight," she says as I take the suitcase to my bed. "It was spur-of-the-moment. He's booked you a ticket on a flight for this afternoon. Ginger's taking you to the airport at one."

"Wait – I'm flying alone?"

"Aw. Don't tell me you're scared?"

"Of course not. But I haven't been on an airplane in years. I don't even remember what it's like."

"In your case? It's nice. Eric bought you a first-class ticket, you lucky, spoiled little brat."

I lean against my bed and squint at her. "Did you switch foundations, Pam? I usually can't see those lines on your forehead so much."

Her smirk morphs into tight frown, and she inhales deeply, putting her hand on her hip. "I don't know what I'm going to do without you around." She turns for the door. "But I _do_ look forward to finding out."

Her heels click-clack loudly down the hall. I cross the room and close the door, finally freeing the grin that's been trying to form on my face. I talked him into it. Whatever's going on in Dallas, Eric wants me there. He thinks I could help.

 _So you had better come through,_ says a mean little voice in my head. _He believed you could help him, so you better come through. Or he'll be disappointed. Or angry. And he won't use you again, not for a long time. He'll just use Sookie._

I shake my head, hard. Everything I told Eric was true, and he knows it. I can read young vampires, I can sometimes read older ones. I can certainly read Sookie Stackhouse. Eric will expect me to help him as much as I can with whatever is going on, but he won't demand more than I can give. He's very good about that. It's one of the reasons I love him.

_And I can't let him down._


	7. Arrival

I tighten my grip on the handle of my suitcase as I take in the Hotel Carmilla for the first time. It's giant, I think, even for a hotel. But Dallas is a big city. The sun set just a few minutes ago and now lights on either side of the massive glass door before me send giants rays of red up and over the building's stone walls, almost reaching the roof. It's hard to tell from this close, but I think that from a distance, the hotel probably looks like it's on fire.

I walk forward, my suitcase rolling behind me. A bellhop ducks his head at me, and as I step into the revolving door, I glance back and nod at the shiny black car that just brought me from the airport. Or, rather, the man in the suit standing in front of it. I liked him. He let me choose the music. Now he nods back with a little smile before getting back into his car and driving away and out of my life.

The lobby is expansive, the black tile beneath my feet sending out echoes just at the touch of my sneakers. The fact that it's nearly empty doesn't help. To my right is an area filled with couches and chairs, and there's a bar on the far wall, but only a few people are there.

Wait. I narrow my eyes at the bartender. He looks young, like he's only in his twenties, but he's not. Or, at least, he might not be. He's a vampire.

I pull my coat tighter around me. It's been a long time since I've been in a hotel, but I remember how it works. The front desk will be around here somewhere, and they'll be able to tell me –

But that's when I look ahead and see Eric standing in the center of the room, his hands in his pockets and his eyes on me. I relax.

"Good flight?" he asks as I reach him. He rests his hand on my head for a moment.

"It was _amazing_ , Eric," I say as he picks up my suitcase. "The seats were like beds. And the plane must have had a hundred movies . . . And I ordered a drink that I thought was just chocolate, but it actually had coffee in it, too, though I couldn't taste it, so I didn't realize until later, and I drank the entire thing, and it was delicious."

"Delightful." He takes hold of my shoulder and guides me through the lobby. I crane my neck to get a better look into the lounge. There are two women embracing on one of the couches, one of them moaning. The other takes a handful of the first woman's hair and pulls her head further to the side, and that's when I realize she's feeding. Out in the open. And no one is panicking.

"This is a hotel for vampires," I say.

"It's designed to accommodate us, yes."

We pass the front desk I thought about earlier, a giant marble thing in front of a wall with shelves to the ceiling, all packed with bottles of a dark substances that may be liquor or may be blood. There's a lovely blonde woman – a vampire – behind the desk. Close by, two men – vampires – pause their conversation when they catch sight of me.

"You're safe," Eric says calmly. "Don't be afraid."

"I'm not afraid."

We step into an elevator. The doors close, leaving Eric and I alone in the sleek little box. He releases me and rests against the wall. I do as well, though he's angled towards the doors and I'm angled towards him. "Will you tell me why we're here now?"

"I will." He looks down at me. "Did you eat on the plane?"

"No."

He looks ahead again. "We will put your bag in our rooms, I will take you somewhere to eat, and I will explain the situation. Then we have a meeting to attend."

"A meeting with who?"

 _"Whom,"_ he corrects absently.

I huff out a breath and roll my head to the side. "A meeting with _whom?"_

"That is one of the things I will explain." We're both quiet for a moment, but then he says, "Be honest, dear. Are you frightened?"

I frown. Aside from the fact that he would feel it if I were scared, he knows I don't lie to him. "No."

"I didn't think so." He cups my chin in his hand and tilts my head back, examining me. "Which is why it concerns me that your heartbeat is –" But he interrupts himself with a sigh that has a hint of a growl. He lets go of my chin just to take my arm and lift it up. Together we watch my fingers twitch and shiver like I'm out in the cold. "That would be the coffee," Eric says, releasing me. He faces forward again and closes his eyes. "We are never using that airline again."

"I feel fine," I say, bouncing a little on the balls of my feet. "I feel good . . . Can I get waffles?"

. . . . .

Once in a while, maybe once a month or so, Eric will take me to do something somewhere. I don't think he plans it – or if he does, he doesn't tell me. I don't mind. It's always a good surprise. Sometimes it's a movie, some old black-and-white film being played in theatres for a special occasion. A few times it's been an art exhibit, and once it was a play – _Hamlet._ But more often than not, he simply takes me out to eat, and we talk. And I love it. But because we can only go out at night, and sometimes not until quite late at night, our options for restaurants are limited. So Eric and I have spent a lot of time in twenty-four-hour diners. They work. They're usually not very crowded – at least not at the hour we go – and it's easy to be inconspicuous. Also, I love waffles.

"Here you go, honey." The waitress, a middle-aged woman who smells like cigarettes, sets a plate of butter-drenched waffles and a bowl of colorful, cubed fruit on the sticky table in front of me.

"Thank you."

She nods at the empty booth across from me. "Your dad sure he don't want somethin'?"

"He's sure." Anytime we're around humans, someone always assumes I'm Eric's daughter. It's the only thing that makes sense in their minds. And I look like I could be his daughter, with my blonde hair and blue eyes. So it's simpler to just let them believe that. Anyway, Eric never corrects them.

It's only seconds after the waitress leaves when Eric slides back in the booth, snapping his phone shut. "Pam sends her love," he says as I take the half-full syrup bottle from the head of the table and tilt it over the waffles, flooding them. "That's enough," he says after just a few seconds, when it's not nearly enough.

"I like a lot of syrup."

"You won't like diabetes." Then his hand is clamped around my wrist. "I said that's enough." He takes the bottle from my hand and lets me go. I lower my arm to the table, sort of wanting to rub it, but not wanting him to see. It's not because he hurt me – he didn't – but because when he touched me, I got a shot of something I didn't like, a sensation that ran up my arm and into my chest, where it is now making itself at home – dozens of bees zipping around and bumping into my ribs and finding no escape.

And I got that from Eric. Eric is . . . anxious.

Which is a feeling all too close to fear. And I've never seen Eric afraid.

I reach for my fork, because if I don't, he'll know something's wrong. I swallow, willing the bees to die, and, as I cut off a piece of waffle, say, "Will you tell me what's going on now?"

His eyes are out the window, even though there's nothing out there but a mostly-empty parking lot and dark stores across the street. "The sheriff of this area – Area Nine – has gone missing. He must be found."

I take a bite. The waffle is undercooked. Or maybe I just don't feel like eating now. I gulp it down anyway. The bees, at least, seem to by dying off. Not bees, that's silly of me. The feeling, Eric's feeling. It's fading from my body. "Why?"

"Because the Area needs a sheriff and he is a good one."

"No, I mean – why do you care if he's found or not? You're a sheriff in Louisiana, and he's one in Texas. What does it matter to you?"

"He is an important figure in the vampire community. And he is very powerful. If something was able to capture him, or harm him, we need to know about it."

He hasn't looked at me once through all of this. I study him. "It's more than that," I say, without really meaning to.

Now he gives me his attention. Sees how I'm looking at him. "Stop doing that."

"Doing what?"

"You know what."

"I can't help it."

"Well, I suggest you _learn to."_

He didn't yell, but his voice rose enough to make me duck my head. I play with a bit of waffle, my appetite entirely gone now.

At least a full minute passes before Eric says, "He is an old friend." His voice is significantly softer now. Gentler. But also tired. "I owe it to him to ensure he is alright."

I spin the bit of waffle around in some syrup and it crumples apart like paper in water. I put my fork down. "Who are we meeting tonight?"

"Two of his constituents."

"I don't know what constituent means."

"It's like a subject. But, in this case, for a sheriff. Not a king."

"Or a queen."

"Or a queen."

I push my plate away a little, just enough so I have the room to fold my hands in front of me. "You said he was powerful."

"Yes."

"As powerful as you?"

"Far more powerful than I."

I stare at him. "And someone took him?"

"We will find out more tonight. But yes, it is a possibility."

"Who . . . ?"

Eric thinks for a moment. "I've told you how some humans have been . . . less-than-welcoming to vampires since we revealed ourselves to them."

"Yes."

"For the most part, they can do us no significant harm. But one group, a church called the Fellowship of the Sun, has been gaining momentum. There is talk that they may have had something to do with this."

I've never been in a church. But Eric doesn't like them, and he's had me read about the things churches have done throughout history, to both humans and vampires. So I decided a long time ago that I didn't like churches, either. But still, this church is a human thing. They're only _humans_ . . .

"How could humans hurt a vampire more powerful than you?" I can't imagine a human, or even a group of humans, going against Eric and winning. It's laughable. The idea that there is a vampire who is stronger than Eric is difficult enough to comprehend, but the idea of that vampire being defeated by humans? It's impossible. It must be.

But Eric doesn't say so. He only says, "That is one of the things I am hoping to find out." But then he adds, "If the church did it at all. I am far from convinced."

Which comforts me a little.

He checks his watch. "We must go soon. Eat your fruit."

. . . . .

It isn't as fun as it might sound, being in Eric's arms while he's running. I'm used to it, after all these years, but it isn't exactly pleasant. It can get cold, for starters. And even if the world did look interesting from this point of view, and not just like a giant blur, my eyes couldn't stay open long enough to really take it in. Flying, at least when Eric is in a hurry – and he always seems to be in a hurry – is even worse. But it's just the running tonight, thankfully.

When he stops, I open my eyes to see a beautiful house that might actually be a mansion. Parts of it slope upwards and form sharp angles in the sky, and glass windows are all over the side facing us. A light is on at the far end of the house, though it's held back by thick curtains. We're on a large lawn with hedges on either side of us. It's quiet here.

Eric sets me down and, when I try to keep looking around, takes my shoulders and has me face him. "What are the rules for situations such as this, Annika?" he asks, fixing the part in my hair.

"Don't leave your sight and don't speak unless I'm spoken to."

"Good girl. But do not forget why you are here." He pops the collar of his jacket. "Pay very close attention to these vampires. Pick up whatever you can from them."

I'm tempted to ask how old they are, but instead I just nod.

He leads me up a stone driveway and to a broad white door. It opens as we reach it, revealing a dark-haired woman in a pretty, cream-colored suit. Her earrings glitter as she lifts her chin. "Hello, Eric." She has an accent of some sort. Her words have a sort of _click_ to them.

"Isabel. You are looking well."

Her eyes lower to me, and I feel Eric's hand close around my shoulder. "So this is the child," she says quietly.

I clasp my hands in front of me as Eric says, "Yes. I think she could be of help."

Isabel nods. "Hello, lovely girl," she says, and I'm not feeling anything from her – she's like a numb spot, like Eric usually is, like vampires all too often are – but I think her brown eyes have a touch of sadness. "Do not be afraid. No one will harm you here."

"She's not afraid," Eric says, to my gratitude. "She knows what becomes of vampires who threaten the humans of others . . ."

"Save your veiled threats for someone who needs to hear them." Isabel pushes the door open all the way and steps back, inviting us in. "Such people may be closer than you would like."


	8. The Meeting

Soft piano music greets us in the foyer, some classical song that I recognize but can't name. Isabel leads us into a large, open room. Two-thirds of it is filled with simple, sharp-angled couches and armchairs surrounding a glass coffee table, and the other third holds a long dining table.

"Stan has not yet arrived," Isabel says. "Nor has your telepath. No one else is coming; we thought it best to keep the situation as quiet as possible."

Eric directs me to one of the couches, keeping his hand on me until I'm sitting. Then he starts pacing behind me. I tangle my fingers. The wall I'm facing is made almost entirely of glass, allowing me to see out to a giant fountain and a garden bordered by more hedges. I'd like to walk through it. I know I won't be able to, though.

"What is your name?"

I don't realize immediately that Isabel is speaking to me. I twist and check with Eric. He gives a quick nod. "Annika," I say.

She smiles at me. "I would offer you a snack, Annika, but I'm afraid water is all we have here that would suit you."

I open my mouth, even though I don't have any words ready, because no vampire aside from Eric and Pam has ever _offered_ me anything. But I don't need to speak, anyway. Eric doesn't give me the chance.

"I can take care of my own human, Isabel, thank you." He comes to a stop beside her, glaring. "There's no point in waiting. Tell me what you know."

Isabel, annoyed, crosses her arms and begins to speak, but the doorbell interrupts her. "Excuse me," she says, before vanishing from the room. Eric starts to walk again. His shoes land heavier, louder than they should. Through the wall comes the familiar, bubbly voice of Sookie Stackhouse, along with a softer reply from Isabel.

"You're late," I hear Eric say a minute later. Sookie has appeared in the archway leading into the room, hair done, wearing a bright red dress patterned with flowers. Isabel is ahead of her and Bill Compton is behind her, his hand on the small of her back. "Well, nice to see you, too," Sookie coolly tells Eric. Then she notices me. "Annika! I didn't know you were gonna be here." She comes closer, grinning. I stare back.

"Excuse her," Eric says. "I imagine she is struggling to behave cordially to someone who threatened her with a gun just days ago."

"I didn't threaten _her_ ," Sookie snaps, but then she seems to hear how flimsy that excuse sounds, and she lowers beside me on the couch. "Listen," she says softly, "I'm really sorry about that. I was just scared for my friend, and I did the only thing I could think of."

"Don't worry," I reply. "I would do the same to you. In a heartbeat."

Her smile slips, and she struggles to retrieve it but can't quite get it right. She rises and joins Bill behind one of the chairs to my left. Bill's eyes move between Isabel and Eric and then finally Sookie as she brushes her hand against his. I didn't expect Bill to be here, but I should have. Sookie is his human. It's fitting that be here with her.

Then a new person appears beside Isabel. A tall man in a cowboy hat. He's already straightening the cuffs of his black button-down shirt by the time I hear the muffled sound of the front door slamming closed behind him. He removes the hat and tosses it on the glass table. "Northman." He gives Eric a nod, but then his eyes move to me, two cold knives. "This the psychic you bought a few years back?"

"Indeed."

"Hmph. Almost makes me think you don't trust us."

"Forgive me. I didn't mean to leave any doubt."

The man looks like he wants to snarl at Eric, but he holds it back. He turns to Sookie and Bill. Eric is introducing them before he can ask. "This is Bill Compton and his human, Sookie Stackhouse. She is a telepath. I believe we could use her abilities to our advantage."

"Pleased to meet you." Sookie beams at the vampire like a fool.

His face stays blank. No, not blank. Irritated. "You didn't tell me Eric was bringing so many fucking humans, Isabel."

I stay still and quiet. Eric stays quiet. Bill and Sookie stay neither still nor quiet.

"Now, wait just a minute!" Sookie snaps, putting a hand on her hip.

Bill clenches his hands at his sides and glares murderously at Stan. "Respect her!"

I almost want to be offended that he demanded respect only for Sookie, but I can't be, because of course it's not his place to defend me. It's Eric's. And he apparently sees no need to do so.

"I couldn't tell you, Stan," Isabel says, each word like a needle. "You've been off on your own for days."

"Are you certain Godric was abducted by the Fellowship of the Sun?" Eric says, officially starting the meeting. I can feel him moving back and forth behind me, like a lion in a cage. And I can _feel_ him, feel what he's feeling. Just a little, deep down in me. Some slight, simmering heat. But not red, like it should be. Black. It's not pleasant.

It flared up when he said _Godric_.

"Yes," Stan answers, right as Isabel says, "No." Both sound confident. I watch as Isabel rolls her eyes, as Stan ignores her, and I try to relax and focus all at the same time. It's not easy, forcing these things. I've gotten good at reading humans on demand, but not, of course, vampires. And Eric's . . . Anger? Anxiety? Whatever it is – it isn't helping.

"They're the only ones with the organization and manpower," Stan insists.

"But they're amateurs. It doesn't make any sense." She turns to Sookie and Bill. "This is Godricwe're talking about. Two thousand years old."

My mouth opens a little. I've never met a vampire that old before. Eric's the oldest one I've ever known, and yes, I assumed Godric was older when he told me Godric was more powerful, but _two thousand_ years old . . .

"Old don't make you smart," Stan growls.

Isabel acts as if she didn't hear him. "Besides, there's no proof."

"If they've got him, I'll hear it," Sookie says. "That's my job."

So that's why Eric wanted her here. For the members of the church.

"There's no reason to wait," Stan says, and as he does, something flashes through my mind with enough force to make me dig my fingernails into this couch's leather armrest. Or maybe it's not the force of it. Maybe it's just seeing Stan, dressed in clothes that are from a time long ago and nothing at all like a cowboy's – there's lace on the collar and the sleeves puff out – ripping the head off a woman inside a grand room that's littered with bodies and covered in red. He tosses his head back and laughs, blood running from his mouth. Then I'm back in this room again, this nice room with its glass wall that shows a garden outside. I release a breath I've been holding. It comes out ragged.

If Eric notices, he says nothing.

". . . full-out attack," Stan is saying now. My hands grab at each other on my lap as I make myself give him my attention again, because that's my job. "Exterminate them like the vermin they are. Leave no trace."

"Hm. Vampire-hating church annihilated. Wonder who did it?" Isabel crosses her arms, disgusted. "Fucking brilliant."

Bill Compton breaks in. "I doubt the king of Texas would approve the destruction of our international political agenda."

"Fuck that," Stan says. "The Great Revelation is the greatest mistake we ever made."

Isabel steps up to Stan, close enough that it has to be a threat. She's a head shorter than he is and I don't even know how much lighter, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything with vampires. " _Don't_ use Godric to make your own little power play."

The Great Revelation was the coming out of vampires. The political agenda Bill mentioned is, I think, vampire mainstreaming. Vampires having the option to mainstream, at least. Eric and Pam saw the Revelation and the agenda as an opportunity to open Fangtasia, so it's been good for them, for us; but they still have no desire to actually blend in with human society. As someone who's only ever wanted to join vampire society, I don't blame them.

The black simmering feeling in my gut jumps up to my chest and expands, and I flinch in anticipation just before I hear, "You are completely incompetent!" I don't have to see him to know that Eric's teeth are clenched. The knuckles on both of my hands are turning white. I release one from the other and flex them, breathing deeply as he continues. "What's happened to Godric that he surrounds himself with clowns?"

There it is again – that flare-up, that burst of energy that comes from him when he says that name.

Isabel moves towards Eric, towards me, but her eyes are on him. "We invited you here as a courtesy."

_Why?_

"This is not your territory," she says. "You have no voice here."

"Yeah, Sheriff." Stan suddenly seems happy to be agreeing with Isabel. "Why don't you run on back down to Louisiana? We don't need you or your puppets."

I've only heard anyone speak to Eric that way a few times in my life. The speaker came to regret it each time. But now, Eric doesn't threaten. He doesn't ram Stan into anything. All he does is say, without a trace of doubt, "Oh, I'm not going anywhere."

"And I'm nobody's _puppet_ ," Sookie adds, her face twisted like she tasted something bad.

Bill steps in again, apparently determined to keep this meeting on task. I like him for that. "What we need is a plan."

"I have a plan!" Stan yells.

"It's not a plan," Isabel says. "It's a movie!"

"It's not a movie . . . It's a _war_."

Eric's right behind me. I can feel him. Normally, Eric's presence, whether I'm feeling it like a psychic or just like a human, calms me. It makes me feel safe. But that's not happening now. _"Idiots."_

Stan doesn't let the idea of an attack drop. In fact, he explains it in detail, painting great pictures of the sort of slaughter he imagines inflicting on the hundreds of humans within the church. I lose track of it after a while, his ranting and Isabel's occasional interruptions, and try not to focus on what they're saying so much as them, but I don't pick anything up after that flash of Stan's past. Because these are old vampires. Because Eric's rage, his . . . damn it, his _fear_ . . . it's trying to boil over.

And I'm a little afraid, too. My fear is like a snake slithering beneath everything he is feeling, which is more like a dragon. I've never sensed his emotions this strongly before. Never. Which means I've either suddenly taken a great leap in power – which doesn't explain why I can't get a single useful thing off Stan or Isabel – or Eric is just that furious. That worried. That frightened.

For some vampire I've never even met, or heard of.

The heat in my chest races up my shoulders and seizes them, forcing me to clench my fists, and I jump when I hear something shatter behind me. Something valuable, I'm sure. "Godric has protected you!" Eric shouts, momentarily silencing Stan and Isabel. "Made you rich! And you stand here spitting and scratching like infants!"

Eric's voice is one of my favorite sounds in the world. But not when it's like this. Not when he's upset. When he's upset, it's my absolute least favorite sound. The scariest sound I know, I think. So now, even as he yells at people who are not me, I lower my head and my shoulders and try not to move anymore after that.

"Don't any of you care that there's a traitor in your midst?" Bill asks suddenly.

"No," Stan says flatly.

Isabel, at least, looks taken aback. "Impossible."

"Someone tried to kidnap me from the airport," Sookie says. Eric comes around the couch as she speaks, his fingers halfway curled into fists.

"You were the only ones that knew she was coming," Bill says to Stan and Isabel, his voice tense.

Eric stops in front of Sookie and Bill, facing away from me and towards the Dallas vampires. "Explain." He sounds like he's giving an order, though I'm fairly sure he can't do that here. But no one corrects him.

Stan's eyes flicker to Isabel first. "Unless it was you . . ."

"Unless it was you!" she snaps back.

 _Finally._ Beautiful, simple certainly glows briefly in my chest, not overpowering Eric's storming emotions, but stubbornly making itself known in spite of them. "Eric," I say, my voice coming out as rasp, and as he turns to look at me, so does everyone else in the room, and I realize I don't know if this is okay to announce to all of them. _"Neither of them had anything to do with that,"_ I say. In Swedish.

"The hell she sayin', Northman?" Stan barks.

Eric ignores him. _"You are certain?"_

I nod. His eyes drop to the ground, and he thinks for a second before turning back to Isabel and Stan. I close my eyes, suddenly tired, but happy – grateful, though I don't know to who (or _whom_ ) – that I managed to pick up something that mattered at least a little.

"Look," I hear Sookie say, and I force my eyes open again to see that she's addressing Isabel and Stan. "If y'all argue anymore, I'm either gonna fall asleep or start screamin', so this is what we're gonna do."

And this is the moment in which I reach my ultimate conclusion about Sookie Stackhouse: I admire her, I might even like her, and she is an idiot.

But Eric doesn't interrupt her. Stan and Isabel exchange glances but say nothing. And Sookie continues. "I'll infiltrate the Fellowship of the Sun."

There's a twinge of something new in my stomach.

Stan groans and Bill looks horrified. "Absolutely not."

"Let her speak," Eric orders. And he _can_ give orders to Bill, no matter where we are.

"Since Bill glamored the kidnapper, no one there knows who I am," Sookie says, sounding almost chipper. "I'll pretend I wanna join the church and check out all their thoughts."

The twinge from earlier has grown into a lump in the center of my body, hanging heavy like a sack of water. Dread.

"No," Bill argues. His worry tries to poke in on me but I manage to shove it away, which is good, because I really don't think I can handle feeling anything else. "During the day, none of us can help you."

I speak in Swedish again, my voice still low. _"She shouldn’t go there. Something bad is there."_

Eric answers over his shoulder without looking away from Sookie. _"Be quiet."_

I stare at him, even though he can't see it.

"It'll only take a little while," Sookie is saying. "Really, Bill, it's simple."

Stan bends down and picks his hat up from the table. "Waste of time . . ." He crosses the room to the archway that leads to the front door. He pauses to look back and say, "When we could drink 'em all." He puts on his hat. "I want no part of this." Then he's gone.

Isabel, in the meantime, is sort of wringing her hands like I do, and even though she doesn't look entirely comfortable, she admits, "There's no easier way to find out if they're involved."

"If it leads us to Godric, we'll do it," Eric says.

I swallow, then I speak. I have to. He can't feel what I'm feeling, he doesn't understand – _"Eric, there’s something bad –"_

_"I said be quiet!"_

So I shut up and drop my eyes to my hands. "The decision is made," he tells the others, and the dread inside of me twists in on itself, and Eric's feelings sort of calm down but don't really lighten up, and I sigh, and I'm tired. But I'm quiet.

. . . . .

My feet are barely on the floor of our hotel room when Eric says, "Tell me what you found out."

I stumble into the cold room as he closes the door. "Um . . ." I try to gather my thoughts. I'm disoriented, because of the run here, because of the meeting, because of what I can feel coming off of Eric even now. "Neither Isabel or Stan was lying about the attack on Sookie and Bill."

"Yes, you told me that. What else?" His eyes are piercing, and as he steps towards me, expectant, I feel incredibly small. It takes everything I have not to back away from him.

"Sookie shouldn't go into the church," I blurt.

"You said that, too." He turns away from me, which is a relief, and he begins to pace, as if we're still at the meeting. It almost feels that way.

I watch him, confused. A little hurt. A little scared. "And . . . it doesn't matter?"

He spins on his heel and takes a stride towards me, and this time I do back up, not even pausing to think about it. "Did you find anything else out?" he demands.

I don't have to feel what he's feeling to see how close he is to completely losing his temper.

Which is why it's so hard to say what I have to say next. "Nothing . . . I can be sure of."

He makes a disgusted noise. _Scoffs_ , I think, is the right word. And it cuts through me.

"Eric . . ." My voice trembles. I sound younger than I am. "It was hard to focus when you were right there, so angry, angry enough for me to feel it. I couldn't –"

"Do not blame me for your failings!"

I don't remember deciding to retreat to the couch, but suddenly my feet have taken me there.

"You practically _begged_ me to bring you here, and this is all you can give me?" Eric looms over me, jabbing his finger at the ground. He's using his teeth more than he needs to for talking – or yelling. "Nothing of Godric, or whether the Fellowship of the Sun has him, nothing at all?"

There's a pillow beside me. I take it in my arms. It's stiff. I hug it and don't look at Eric.

_"Useless."_

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him going for the door. Then I can't see much of anything, because the tears start to come. I hear the twist of the knob as I press my face into the pillow. I sob once, then press my face into the pillow harder.

I sit there in the stillness, battling the lump in my throat, my shoulders shaking, until I hear, "Please don't do that."

I thought he had left. I don't look up.

"I know you did what you could." Eric sounds tired. "I'm sure I did not make it easy, and contrary to what I may have just implied, I do not blame you. At all. So don't cry."

Everything has changed about him. His voice is soft. His fury is dying, turning blue and melting. Which is a great relief.

"Sweetheart . . ."

I finally lift my head. Sort of. Enough to tell him, without looking at him, "I should have picked up more. I-I should have focused better –"

I feel the couch dip in front of me. "What did I just say?" His hand covers my head and sweeps my hair back. "I do not blame you. I am not angry with you, Annie, I am . . . frustrated by the situation."

He hasn't called me _Annie_ in a long time. I rest my head on the pillow but turn it so I can see him, if I roll my eyes up enough. He brushes some wetness from my eyes before dropping his hand. "I knew I was asking a lot when I called you here. I decided to try, but Stan and Isabel are very strong vampires." He sighs. "The fact that you picked up anything from them at all is probably more remarkable than I am giving you credit for."

I take a long, quivering breath. "Please don't patronize me."

"From the time you were very young, I made it a point not to patronize you. I am not changing that now."

We just look at each other for a while. I can't feel what he's feeling anymore. The emptiness is soothing. "Godric is your maker, isn't he?" I ask quietly.

I've surprised him. I don't do that often. But I can see that I'm right.

"When you spoke of him," I say, "When you said his name – it was like – it _felt_ like when Pam speaks of you."

Eric leans forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands together, his face unreadable.

"I'm sorry," I whisper. "I wish I could be of more help."

He doesn't answer. I think I made a mistake. I'm a second away from apologizing again when he meets my eyes. "Annika, Sookie and Bill cannot know of your fears about her infiltrating the Fellowship of the Sun."

The change in subject throws me, but I recover, and I ride the deep blue wave that rolls through my body at the mention of Sookie and the church, and because it's Eric asking me, and because I don't want to cause him any more trouble, I say, "Okay." I don't need to ask any more questions. I don't need to know about any more of this. The caffeine has left my system, I think. I want to sleep.

"The church is comprised of humans," Eric says. "They will not hurt one of their own."

I sit all the way up, sniffing, wiping my eyes. "Eric . . . Don't patronize me."

He blinks. Starts to say something. Stops. Thinks. Touches my shoulder and stands.

"I'm going to the bar," he says. "I doubt I will be long, but if I am, you may order room service if you get hungry. Something with vegetables. Do not leave the room. I have my cell phone if you need me."

I nod. A moment passes without Eric leaving. Then he takes my head in his hands. He kisses my forehead before resting his head on mine. "I am sorry I yelled at you."

He leaves before I can reply.


	9. Nightmare

I'm flying.

All I can see are the tops of buildings glittering in the grey-blue dawn sky. Beyond them, a shining white line is breaking over the horizon, glowing the most at its center – the sun is just beginning to fight its way back up for the day. I don't see daybreak very often. It's lovely.

_"Please."_

I spin around, which is the first time I realize that I'm not, in fact, flying – at least, not exactly. I'm on a roof, a flat span of gravel, but I can't feel my feet against the ground, and I can't make myself look down to check that my feet are even there, literally can't make myself – I'm not in control. Which is terrifying enough without seeing what I'm seeing.

I don't recognize him at first, because he's on his knees and his face is streaked with blood. But it's Eric. Eric, crying. Pleading.

_"Please."_

"Eric . . .?"

He doesn't reply. I don't think he heard me. I can't go to him, so I just try to call out to him again, my voice high-pitched and cracking. "Eric!"

His shoulders shake. He can't hear me. I'm not really here, am I?

And now I'm turning back to the sunrise. It's happening faster than it should. The sky is swirling with shades of pink and orange. The sun is peeking out at me.

Eric can't be up here. It's already far too late for him to be outside –

"Eric!"

But I'm stuck, I can't turn to see him. I can just hear his sobs.

And then I smell smoke.

_"No!"_

There's a cool touch on my forehead. "Annika."

"Eric!" I wail. I can move again, though my legs are tangled up in something. I try to turn from the sun and run to him, but before I'm all the way around everything is dark. The sky, the sun – it's all gone. Lost in the black.

"Annie, Annie, shh . . . shh . . ." There's the same cold touch, brushing hair off my forehead. "Relax."

"Eric . . ." I whimper to the darkness.

"Shh. I'm here, little one. You are safe."

I'm sitting up in this strange bed, either pinned to Eric's chest or burying myself in it, I don't really care which. I'm just relieved to be there. Relieved that he's here at all, here and himself and okay. I cling to his shirt, distantly aware of how childish that is, how childish this entire scene is, but it's not important, not at this moment. "I . . . It was sunrise . . ."

"It's the middle of the day. You were dreaming."

But he's wrong.

. . . . .

In even my earliest memories of Eric, he paces. In front of the fireplace in the farmhouse library. In its kitchen, talking business on the phone, believing I'm in bed. Across the wooden porch as a storm approaches . . .

It's something he's always done when he needs to think, something I've witnessed a thousand times. So, I suppose it's only natural that I do it as well.

I move back and forth across the patterned hotel floor, the carpet scratchy on my bare feet. Eric sits on the edge of the bed, bent over his knees, watching me. The windows at this hotel have light-blocking technology, so the only light we have comes from the dim lamp on the bedside table.

"You were on a roof. In a city." Step, step, step, turn. "Maybe here. I don't know. You were up high, the buildings around you – I was looking at the tops of them." Turn. "The sun was coming up . . . You weren't leaving. You were . . ."

_Crying. On your knees. Begging._

I swallow, take a step, turn. "Frightened. Badly."

"Well, that does not sound like me, does it?"

"I don't know _why_ you were there . . ." I run both hands through my hair, forcing my fingers past more than one tangle. "I didn't understand _what_ was happening . . ."

"You were having a bad dream, dear," Eric says for the third or fourth time. Still patiently. "That is what was happening."

"It wasn't a dream," I say for the third or fourth time. Still impatiently. "It was too vivid. It was . . ." But I don't want to say it. If I call it what it was – a _vision_ – that's somehow admitting that it will come true. That at some point Eric will be on a roof as the sun rises and then . . .

"Please stop pacing," Eric says.

_"You_ do it," I mutter in a tone I would second-guess if I weren't so tense. In fact, when he snags me by the wrist, I fear I'm in trouble, but as he pulls me towards him his eyes tell me I'm not. He tucks my hair behind my ears, and I study his face. It's already becoming difficult to picture it with bloodstains. That's a good sign, maybe.

"Listen to me." Eric rests his hands on my shoulders, keeping his thumbs against my cheeks. "Of the beings in this world who might want me dead, very few of them have the means or power to make it happen. And I certainly am not about to meet the sun on my own accord."

Well, I wasn't even worried about that. When I saw him on that roof, he was begging somebody, and I couldn't see them, but that tells me he wasn't alone, at least. And I already knew Eric would never intentionally try to meet the sun. Even if he were sad enough to want to do that, he wouldn't. It's not in his nature.

"What you saw was absurd," he continues, "as dreams often are. Even psychics can have nightmares, Annika. That is all this was."

I close my eyes. He sounds so certain, but he can't be. He just admitted that there are _some_ people, no matter how few, that want to and _could_ hurt him. Kill him. So he can't be sure of his safety. And I can't, either.

But when I open my eyes, ready to tell him that, I see a dark stream spilling from his nose.

"You're bleeding." Even as I speak, he takes one hand from me to wipe his face, and I slip out from under the other one and sit beside him. "You need to go back to bed." If vampires stay awake during the day, they get the Bleeds, which, aside from looking eerie, makes them weak and sickly.

"It's nothing," Eric says, licking his finger clean. "I can stay with you a while."

But the last thing I need is to see Eric weak and sickly. With blood on his face. "No. I'm alright." I sigh, and even though I don't believe it nearly as much as I would like to, I add, "It was a bad dream."

He takes a moment to decide whether to listen to me, but eventually rises. "You may turn on the television if you like. It helps some people sleep." He smooths my hair, traces his hand around my head, and lifts my chin up so I look at him. "Leave the worrying to me, Annika. I've had far more practice with it."

As the door connecting his room to mine clicks closed behind him, I start pacing again.

. . . . .

I do eventually go back to sleep, although it's only a couple of hours before sunset, and only with the help of an old television show about four elderly women who live in Florida together and interfere with one another's love lives. The last thing I remember is one of the women fighting with her mother. Then Eric's hand is on my back.

"Annika."

I open my eyes immediately.

"It's time to get up. I ordered you breakfast."

I push up from my pillows and watch him walk into the next room, leaving the door open behind him. He's already dressed, so he's ready to go somewhere – to that church, the Fellowship of the Sun, I would guess. Sookie will have gone there during the day – but shouldn't she have gotten back before sunset?

Eric isn't in a great rush, so I suppose not.

But he intends to take me somewhere. If he didn't, he would have left a note and let me sleep. Maybe he's going to give me another chance at proving he was right to bring me to Dallas.

Eric's room is bigger than mine, with two couches, an armchair, and a table all properly arranged in the main area, and his bed set off in a smaller room that can be closed off with sliding doors, though it isn't at the moment. On the table is a bronze tray with an omelet of some sort and two pieces of toast. Eric disappears into the bathroom as I sit and bite off the corner of one slice. Crunchy, like I like it. "Where are you going?" I ask when my mouth is free again.

"To the church." He emerges from the bathroom, sliding on his watch. "To ensure all is well with Sookie."

"Shouldn't she be out by now?"

"I would have expected so. But I spoke to Isabel earlier. One of her humans accompanied Sookie, and she hasn't sensed anything from him that should worry us."

"But you still need me to eat fast again, don't you?"

"If you would." Eric is good at politely ordering me to do things. He watches as I take a bite of my omelet. "How do you feel?"

The omelet's good – so gooey with cheese I can barely taste the green stuff. I swallow. "Better." I'm still a bit uneasy, but sometime in my brief sleep the utter terror for Eric's life drained away. The scene on the roof – it's already blurry in my memory – seems far too unrealistic to be worth getting upset. "I think you were right. I think it was just a bad dream."

"How much easier your life would be if you accepted that I am right about most things."

He's joking, more or less, and I smile a little. I cut another chunk from the omelet. "Am I going with you?"

"No."

"Then why did you wake me up?"

He takes his leather jacket from a rack by the door. "I do not want you here alone."

"I stayed here alone last night." I ordered pizza – with vegetables – and watched two movies on television that were both named _Star Wars_ something, and they were strange, but I liked them and enjoyed myself.

"I was downstairs. I could have been here in an instant if necessary." He puts on the jacket and pops his arms out to make it fit correctly. "If I am going to be out of the building, I want you with a vampire. Of my choosing."

I put down my fork. "You're leaving me with a babysitter."

"Annika, you are a human in a hotel full of vampires. It is not safe for you to be unaccompanied. Especially not when some vampires in the area now know there is a sweet little psychic nearby. They might get . . . foolish ideas."

I fold my hands together. Psychics and vampires have a long history. Vampires, who always like power, like having psychics around to assist them with . . . well, anything.

And psychics who become vampires . . . well, they're usually the most powerful vampires of all. At least according to Eric.

But, for vampires who aren't psychic – meaning most of them – the next best thing is to have someone who is. Which is why Eric put so much effort into getting me. Of course, I'm not a normal psychic. He says I'm a rare sort of powerful. Knowing him, he's kept that fact quiet from the world, but sometimes word manages to get around, even about secret things. So for vampires in Dallas, vampires like _Stan_ , to know that I'm here . . .

"I am not worried." Eric's been watching me. He must have noticed the rather violent way my hands are twisting together. I separate them. He says, "Only a suicidal fool would attempt to take what is mine. I am just being cautious."

I tear off a bit of toast, let it fall to my plate, tear off a second bit. "Okay. So who am I staying with?"

His lips curl up in a way that worries me.

. . . . .

The door opens only seconds after Eric knocks, revealing a pretty, teenage-looking vampire with long red hair. She's wearing a bath robe and her eyes are wide. "Eric . . . Annika."

"Jessica," Eric says pleasantly. He's enjoying this too much. "Lovely to see you again."

She tries to smile but fails. She's only been a vampire for a few weeks, so I can read her almost as easily as a human, but really, it's not necessary. Anyone with eyes can tell she's anxious. I can't blame her. If Eric shows up at your door without warning, you should be nervous. "H-hi. Um, Bill's in the next room? I can get him –?"

"I'm not here for Bill. I have a job for you."

She blinks. "A-a job?"

"You remember Annika."

I wrap my right hand around my left wrist. "Hello, Jessica."

She tries to smile again. Fails again. My face tries to twist into a scowl, but I don't let it.

Jessica stayed at Fangtasia for a couple of weeks right after Bill turned her – he had to, as punishment for killing Longshadow, because evidently turning someone is nothing Bill ever wanted to do, which I don't understand – because Bill had something to take care of and he couldn't handle Jessica while he did it. And baby vampires need handling. So Jessica and I inevitably spent some time together, and . . . we didn't get along.

"I am going out for the night and I do not feel comfortable leaving her alone," explains Eric. "So I would appreciate it if she could stay with you."

"With . . .? Um . . . I . . ."

Eric waits patiently for her to realize that she can't say no.

"I . . . guess so? Of course." This time she does manage to hold a smile, but it looks like one that's been painted on a doll. Her eyes aren't in it at all. Her eyes look like those of a cornered rabbit.

_"Please explain how she is supposed to protect me,"_ I ask in Swedish, my voice flat. Jessica looks at me as if I just barked at her.

I almost certainly hear Eric chuckle. _"The mere presence of a vampire will be a deterrent. No one who would consider getting to you will know she is only a baby. And, if something bad does happen to occur, she would be a distraction in the moment it would take for_ Bill _to come in from the next room."_

_"Why is he here, anyway? Is he not worried about_ Sookie?"

_"That is none of your concern."_ He switches back to English. "I am most grateful to you, Jessica. She will need to eat in a few hours, but she can handle that herself. I am sure she will be no trouble . . ."

Jessica nods too hard before stepping aside to let me in. I enter, again fighting the instinct to make a face. I am not a child. I do not throw fits or make things unnecessarily difficult.

But oh, sometimes I'm tempted.

"You girls have fun," Eric says, and winks at me before he vanishes with a breeze that blows back my hair.


	10. Crazy, Human Idiot

Jessica closes and latches the door. We stare at each other. She heaves a sigh – entirely for drama's sake, vampires don't need to breathe in the first place. "Wanna watch TV?" She walks past me without waiting for an answer.

I follow her to the unmade bed as she digs the remote out from under the pillows. Her room is the size of mine, which is strange, because Eric is far richer than Bill Compton is. But Eric is the reason Bill and Sookie are in Dallas in the first place. He may have paid for their rooms. But did he know they were bringing Jessica?

"Why are you here?" I say.

"I could ask you the same question." She holds the remote out to me, her arm unfolding like a broken stick.

"Not really." I snatch the remote. _"I'm_ useful."

Her head falls to the side as if the muscles in her neck all disappeared. Her tongue pushes at her lips, like she's holding in words she might regret.

I roll my eyes and walk around the bed. There's a grey armchair in the corner, identical to the one in my room. I fall into it. "I just _mean_ ," I say, turning on the television, "I'm psychic. Eric brought me here because he thought that might help him. Why did Bill bring you?"

She shoves the bedspread back over the pillows and flops onto the bed as I search the channels. Two women screaming at each other, black-and-white pictures of a battlefield, a group of teenagers laughing at a table outdoors. "I don't know," she says, her tone losing just a little of its edge. She takes a cell phone from the bedside table, looks at the screen, and then slaps it back down. Another sigh, just as pointless, just as dramatic. But a wave of her emotions nudges against me – real discomfort. Not quite anxiety, but . . . definitely nerves. And uncertainty – a lot of uncertainty. And some fear. The last time I was with her, when being a vampire was still new to her, it was hard to read anything past her hunger and her excitement, her desperation to kill and, ironically, to live. Eric told me her human parents were religious, strict, and cruel, and that sometimes when people are controlled too much for too long they have trouble containing themselves when they finally get to make decisions on their own. Jessica isn't so gleeful, so wild now. Still some, but . . . the discomfort is stronger. "I think Sookie told Bill they should bring me along. Don't know why – ever since we got here, he's either been with her over there –" She points to the door connecting her room to Bill's – "or workin' with Eric. I don't know on what . . ." I feel her eyes slide to me, and she lets the silence grow, in case I want to fill it with answers. I just keep changing channels.

"Stop," she says after a minute. "I love this show. I used to watch it with my mama and my sister."

My finger pauses. On the television screen, a chubby woman spins around in a wedding dress in front of a group of other women, most of whom put their hands over their mouths or squeal, a couple of whom look blatantly, rudely unimpressed. "Is she getting married?"

"She's tryin' to find the right dress."

"For her wedding."

"Right. Don't know what she's thinkin' with that one. Doesn't do her figure any favors." She checks her phone again. Puts it down too hard again.

"Expecting a call?"

"No – What? Why would you think that?"

"You've looked at your phone twice in the past minute."

"I just . . . don't wanna miss it. If someone does call." She wraps her arms around her knees and looks at her toes.

I pull my legs underneath me. "A human?"

"Why would you assume he's a human?"

_He._ "You haven't been a vampire for long. I doubt you've made many vampire friends. Is he your boyfriend?"

"No. I mean – I'm not –" But then she stops, and sort of . . . I'm not sure. It's as if she shrinks. Something cool runs from her and through me. "He's not my boyfriend," she whispers. "I just thought . . . he might like me."

I set the television remote on the armchair. "Why don't you glamor him?"

"To do what?"

"Whatever you want."

"Is that what Eric does to you?"

My hands curl into fists. "Eric can't glamor me. He wouldn't if he could. That's not how it is between us."

"But that's how it should be between me and this guy?"

I don't know what to say to that. Which isn't a feeling I like. I know how most vampires treat most humans, and I know how Eric and Pam – for the most part – treat me. And it isn't the same. So sometimes I forget that I am, technically, human. And I'm not sure exactly why it's okay to treat me one way when other humans are treated differently, but somehow, it is. Or it always has been. I suppose.

"There's someone at the door," I mutter, and then there's a knock. Jessica looks from the door to me, her eyes round. I allow myself a little satisfaction at that.

"Who is it?" she calls.

The answer is muffled. "It's, uh – it's Hoyt!"

Jessica's face lights up. Happiness floods her, which means it reaches me, too. Not as strongly, but it's nice. "Hoyt?" she repeats, breathless, before springing from the bed and darting to the door.

"Come on, open up . . ." The voice pleads. "I know you must be mad at me –"

Jessica tries to open the door, only to have it catch on the latch. She doesn't realize the problem, just keeps trying to yank the knob harder.

" – I'm so sorry, my mama –"

Jessica squeals in frustration. "The latch, Jessica," I offer.

" – cancelled my cell service, I had no way to get in touch with you, I –"

Jessica bangs both hands against the door.

"The latch!" I repeat, and she goes still for a second, absorbing, before grabbing at the latch, throwing it back, and opening the door.

" – got here as fast as I could."

I rise from the chair and walk forward, peering out the door. The man in the hallway is tall, plain-faced, and wearing a blue-striped shirt that's tucked in over a belt. He holds a bouquet of flowers. "I'm so sorry, Jessica," he says.

"I can't believe it," she whispers after a moment. "You came all this way?"

From where? Bon Temps?

"You're not mad at me," Hoyt concludes, softly, relief on his face. And . . . admiration. Maybe love. I pick at a spot on the wall.

"No," Jessica says, her voice trembling. "I'm so happy I could cry, but I don't want to, cause it's really gross when I do –"

Tentatively, Hoyt hands her the flowers and she backs up a little, allowing him in. He still hasn't noticed me. "I'm sorry about the flowers, too," he tells her. "I got 'em in Bon Temps 'fore I left, and it was just really hot in my car –"

"Oh, they're beautiful," Jessica reassures him, cradling the bouquet.

At that, Hoyt reaches for her. He brushes her hair back, cups her face, and starts to kiss her. A long kiss. She wraps her arms around him, the flowers dangling from her hand, and his hands start to travel down her body, and that's when he happens to open his eyes and finally sees me.

"Whoa –" He pushes Jessica a foot away, keeping his hands on her hips. She looks surprised, distraught, and then _dismayed_ when she follows his eyes and realizes the problem. "Hey, there," Hoyt says, clearing his throat. "Hey, there, sweetie. What's your name?"

"Annika," I say as Jessica moves past Hoyt to close the door.

"Annika." He waves, which is a silly thing to do when you're in the same room as someone. "Hi. I'm – I'm Hoyt. I'm . . . a friend, of Jessica's."

"Yes. I'd come to that conclusion."

"Uh . . ."

"Annika," Jessica says, grinning in a strained way, "is here with, um, one of the . . . vampires? That Bill works with? He asked me to . . . watch her. For the night."

"The – the whole night?"

Jessica closes her eyes. "Yeah. Oh, God, yeah."

"I'm very sorry to inconvenience you so," I say to her.

"Oh, honey, don't – don't worry about it," Hoyt tells me as Jessica glares, "Jessica and me, we were – we were just gonna sit around and talk anyway, and . . . the more the merrier, right?"

"No," Jessica says, drawing both Hoyt's and my attention. She has a determined look on her face. "No, you came _all this way_ – Annika." She's beside me in a second, bending to my level. Eric is the only person who can do that without annoying me. "Hoyt came all this way. Just to see me." The smile that comes across her face makes her look almost human again. Almost like the normal teens I saw on her television just a few minutes ago. "We would . . . I would really, really appreciate it if we could have some time alone."

"Jessica, I didn't ask Eric to leave me here. He wanted me to stay with you. I can't go anywhere else. He would kill me."

"You don't have to leave the room! You could just . . . maybe . . . Hang out in the bathroom?"

I blink at her. "You're joking."

"Oh, please." Jessica grabs my hand before I can react. "Please, please, I would owe you so much. Please."

"I'm not going to sit in the bathroom all night staring at the wall while you two _talk_." I spit out the last word, to make sure she understands that I don't believe for a second that that's all Hoyt came here to do. I was raised by _vampires_. I don't remember a time when I didn't know what sex was.

"Well – hey!" Hoyt pulls something out of his pocket, white wires spilling from it in a tangle. "You can use my iPod. It's got, uh, over four hundred songs on it. Probably somethin' you like on there. Almost definitely." He holds it out over Jessica's shoulder. I ignore him, but Jessica takes the iPod and offers it to me.

"Annika." She's still gripping my hand. Her blue eyes are intense. "Annika, please."

I sigh.

_Jessica is having a hard time of things,_ Eric told me at Fangtasia, shortly after breaking up a fight between Jessica and me in which I called her white trash and she threw a shotglass at my head. _The transition from human to vampire is not an easy one. I know she is difficult, but be kind to her._

"Fine," I say. "But you should know that Eric's not going to be happy about this."

"Oh, no – no, you can't tell Eric." She drops my hand just to grip my shoulder. "No, no. Eric might tell Bill, and Bill can _not_ know." She lowers her voice and glances at the door to Bill's room, even though Eric told me most of the walls in this hotel are soundproof. Vampires can be loud.

"No. I can't lie to Eric."

"It won't be a lie! You just – wouldn't mention to him that Hoyt was here."

"Eric would consider that a lie. I do _not_ lie to Eric." He taught me that lesson when I was six years old. I have no desire to make him think I've forgotten it.

"Annika – _please_." Jessica leans closer to me. Her eyes are shining. She whispers, low enough that Hoyt can't hear, "I really, really like him. I might . . . you know." She shrugs, dropping her gaze. "More-than-like him. So, just . . . please."

I take three strides across the room, cross my arms, and stare out the window at the city and its thousands of tiny lights.

_Don't be an idiot. Don't be a crazy, human idiot._

If I hide something from Eric and he finds out . . . Well, I'm honestly not sure what he would do to me. I know that he has struck me on only one occasion in my life, and that was for lying to him. And he told me if I ever did it again . . .

But that first time was a long time ago. And this is such a small thing – like Jessica said, not a real lie. Just . . . hiding something. Something that has nothing to do with Eric, that will never affect him at all.

Hoyt showed up with flowers. He drove from Bon Temps.

That was . . . really romantic.

_I'm an idiot. A crazy, human idiot, and Eric's probably going to hang my skin on the wall right above that stupid sword . . ._

I'm about to tell Jessica I'll do it when Hoyt says, "Here, hey – I'll give you twenty dollars."

And because I was raised to be enterprising, I face him and say, "Make it thirty."


	11. Ragged

_"There's a tear in my beer_

_'Cause I'm cryin' for you, dear,_

_You are on my lonely mind._

_Into these last nine beers_

_I have shed a million tears,_

_You are on my lonely mind . . ."_

"Well, that's terrible," I mutter before clicking the little arrow that points right on Hoyt's scratched, dented iPod. The tiny screen flashes away from a picture of a bearded man in a cowboy hat to a cleanshaven man in a cowboy hat. The white letters beneath the picture read "Friends in Low Places."

_"Blame it all on my roots,_

_I showed up in boots –"_

"Ugh, no – why do you all wear boots?" I click the arrow again. This has been my life for the past few hours. Sitting on the clean tile of a shiny bathroom – well, sometimes on the edge of the bathtub, sometimes on the toilet with the seat down – flipping through song after song on a stranger's iPod, the earbuds repeatedly falling from my ears as I try not to think about whatever's happening in the next room.

Hoyt likes country music, something I have barely any knowledge of. Most of the music I hear is beeping, bumping club music that sounds more like a robot than a song. Eric sometimes listens to classical pieces or recordings of Old Swedish songs, so I hear things like that as well, and I usually think they're pretty. But Hoyt has nothing like that – nothing in Swedish, nothing classical, and no club music. Some pop, though. Some of it not bad. And a lot of rock – soft rock, with lyrics I can understand, not the bashing, screaming stuff that Longshadow used to listen to. A band called U2 had some songs I liked. And someone called Bob Seger. So it's not a total waste of time, sitting in this bathroom for half of the night.

But it does drag on. So, when the door cracks open to reveal Jessica, still in her bathrobe – or back in it, maybe – it's refreshing. "Hey," she says, sort of shrugging. Her hair is a mess. "You can, um . . . you can come out now. Hoyt went out to pick up some food. He didn't want to put room service on the bill . . ." She widens her eyes. "Oh, God. Food. Oh, you gotta be hungry. I'm so sorry, um –" She disappears back into the room. I rise, gathering the tangled wires of the earbuds as I follow her out.

She's in the corner of the room, where there's a sink and a mirror above a mini-fridge. She shakes out a hand towel, lifts a hairbrush. "There's a menu here somewhere – I saw it, I'm sure –"

"It's fine. I'll just get something from the minibar."

"Are you sure –?"

"Yeah." I cross the room to the fridge, dropping Hoyt's iPod on the bed as I go. I open the fridge and take in the dozens of brightly-colored packages before picking out a bag of potato chips.

"I'm sorry." Jessica props herself against the sink with one arm, the hand of the other arm gripping her elbow. "I can't believe I didn't think about feedin' you."

She really is sorry. I can sense it. I sigh. "It's okay. Honestly. I know vampires can forget how regularly humans need to eat." I pop open the potato chip bag. The smell of salt and oil puffs out at me. I fall back on the bed and eat a chip, enjoying the grease and the crunch. I never get to eat bad food at home. Just specially-made, vegetable-packed meals and whole grain everything.

Jessica sits beside me. "I'm sorry about the whole . . . bathroom thing, too. I mean, not as sorry as I would have been if you hadn't taken thirty dollars from Hoyt, but . . . still. I know it's not fair of me to ask you to do that. I just . . ." She looks at her hands. "He's really special, you know? And I've never . . . I mean, he's the first boy I've ever . . ."

She really has changed since she stayed at Fangtasia. Well, changed enough. Not just with the discomfort – she's softened, somehow. Slowed down in a good way. "I'm not upset," I tell her. Which is the truth. Maybe I should be, but it's not as if I'm not used to spending long periods of time alone is small rooms. "He seems nice."

She giggles a little. "Yeah. He is."

I nod at the door across the room. "Why is it so important that Bill doesn't know he's here?"

 _"God."_ She almost stretches the word into two syllables. "He'd freak out. I mean, come on. You think when you're seventeen, you're gonna want Eric to know every detail of your love life?"

I almost say that I don't think she can compare my relationship with Eric to her relationship with Bill, since she's only known Bill for a few weeks, but I stop myself. Bill is Jessica's maker. Like Eric is for Pam . . . Like Godric is for Eric. It's a relationship I can't really understand. Something stronger, I think, than anything I can feel.

Which I absolutely hate to think about.

I crinkle the chip bag, crushing some of the chips left inside. "I'm not sure how much Eric would care about my love life." Pam said something a few days ago, when she found me in the basement talking to Lafayette, about me one day sneaking off to see boys Eric wouldn't approve of. I don't entirely understand what she meant by that. I know from lots of stories I've read that humans can be weird about romance and sex, being secretive and acting ashamed about it all. I know that some humans believe that people, girls especially, should stay virgins until they marry. But vampires don't believe anything like that, as far as I'm aware. I don't know why Eric should disapprove if I spend the night with a boy when I'm older. Or with a girl, for that matter. Although maybe that would be different. I'm not sure. How would I even begin to ask him about it?

I feel a blush touch my cheeks at that thought, and I wonder if  _this_ is the feelings humans have about sex that makes them act weird.

"Well, with Bill," says Jessica, "I guess it's really more him . . . worrying about what I might do to Hoyt. Which is completely unfair."

Do what to him? Drink him?

"Still better than my daddy, though." She gets quiet. "He'd probably kill Hoyt, if he found us alone together in a hotel room. Then come at me with his belt."

I set the nearly-empty chip bag aside and turn to Jessica. She's looking at the bedspread, but I think she's thinking of something else entirely. I glance away, but look back before too long, unable to help myself. "Do you miss them? Your family?"

"Not him. Not Daddy. But . . . my mama and my sister, yeah. My sister . . . She's just a little younger'n you. She's way different, though. She's . . ." Jessica picks at the bedspread. "Afraid."

"I'm afraid of things," I say. "Just not many things."

She abandons the thread she's been working at and gives me her attention. "Did you have a family? Before, you know . . . Eric got you?"

"No. He's had me my whole life."

"Whoa. That sounds . . . terrifying."

Something flares up inside of me, something foolish, something that feels a great need to defend my vampire Viking guardian from the opinion of this small dead teenage girl.  _Terrifying._ Eric, whom I have never seen so enraged as he was the day a sheepdog bit me, back when I was little. Who once gifted me with a pet rabbit – I named him Beowulf – even though my birthday was months away. Who held me only hours ago after I woke crying from a nightmare, not for the first time. Far from the first time.

Oh, but here comes another voice, hissing at me from the back of my mind:

_Eric, who killed the dog who bit you, even though you begged him not to. Who gave you Beowulf the night after he threw your favorite doll into the fireplace, because you kept bothering him about her broken shoe strap while he was on the phone. Who had a beaten man chained up in his basement, only steps away from the remains of someone he tore apart like paper . . ._

Yes. Yes, parts of living with Eric, of being Eric's, have been . . . difficult.

My hands find one another and squeeze. "He's never come at me with his belt," I tell Jessica, my voice harder than it needs to be. And when she stiffens, I feel bad, I truly do.

. . . . .

"So is it true that in Europe, the water in the toilet bowl spins the other way?"

From my place in the armchair, I stare at Hoyt, who's propped against the bed's headboard with Jessica nestled under his arm. "What?"

"When you flush the toilet. You know how the water all drains away?" Hoyt shifts on the bed, knocking his long-empty McDonald's bag to the floor as he does so. He whirls a finger in the air to demonstrate. "Well, here it goes, um . . . counterclockwise, I think? I don't know. Could be clockwise. Point is, it's s'posed to go the other way in Europe. Does it?"

Jessica's head is tilted far back, so she can see part of Hoyt's face, even with her head on his shoulder. She's smiling in a strange way.

"I honestly never noticed," I say, as solemnly as I can, because Hoyt has yet to say an unkind word to me.

"Oh. That's too bad. Well, you should check next time you're over there."

"I'll do that."

_BAM BAM BAM._

All three of us whip our heads toward the door, then everything in the room changes.

Jessica is off the bed and on her feet before I can even sit up straight. She presses a finger to her lips, eyes on Hoyt. She gestures for him to stand, and he does, and she guides and pushes him into the bathroom before closing him in as quietly as she can. I'm already at the front door when she goes for it, moving her feet in nervous little steps. She opens it, and there's Eric. "Hi!" she says too brightly.

Eric jerks his head to tell me to come out, and I do, which is when I see Stan and Isabel waiting just down the hall. Stan barely acknowledges me. Isabel does, sort of, but she doesn't smile. Her arms are crossed and her fingers are tapping on her biceps, fast enough to blur. She's on edge. Something hasn't gone well.

"Thank you, Jessica," Eric says. She stutters something back at him, but he's already walking away, pushing me in front of him and past the other vampires. I want to ask him what's happened, but my gut tells me not to speak, not even in Swedish. But I do try to catch his eye, and I succeed, but just for a moment, and he gives me nothing. He pushes at me again, so I turn my head forward. I clasp my hands together and head for the elevator.

. . . . .

"Maybe the little rats have run off," Stan says as we walk down the hallway to Eric's and my room. "Or joined the Fellowship themselves." I'm still ahead of the three of them, listening to every word. Back in the elevator, as Isabel and Stan shot thoughts and insults back and forth, I pieced together that Sookie and the human she went in with – Isabel's human, Hugo – never came back from the church of the Fellowship of the Sun. They aren't dead. Sookie isn't, at least. I would know if she were.

Probably.

Eric was silent throughout the short elevator ride. He's silent now.

Isabel, meanwhile, tells Stan, "Careful, Hugo is  _mine."_

"Oh, please. If you cared about him so much, we'da been in that church hours ago."

We're at the door. I press against the wall, facing Eric as he searches his pockets for the room key. He doesn't look at me. I'm not sure he's even listening to Stan and Isabel.

"With no plan?" Isabel says. "No exit strategy? That's why you'll never be sheriff, Stan – you don't  _think._ "

"And you're too chicken-shit to act. That's why you've been gettin' Godric's coffee for the last forty years . . . And  _you."_

Eric's eyes lift from the door handle. I stop breathing.

"The Fellowship has your maker  _and_  your telepath," Stan drawls at the back of Eric's head. "And still . . . you do  _nothin'."_

I don't see Eric move. I never do, when things like this happen. One second, he's close enough that I could take hold of his hand. The next, there's a  _thud,_  and he's pinning Stan to the wall beside the door opposite ours.

I push myself as far back as I can go, flattening my shoulder blades against the wall. Isabel steps away from Stan, positioning herself a stride off from him and Eric, but siding with neither. Her eyes dart between them, her mouth open, ready to say something if necessary. I wonder if she knows exactly what that will be.

"Are you questioning my loyalty, Stan?" Eric asks in a low voice.

Stan twitches a little, his chin high. "Just tryin' to return Godric to his rightful position."

"Oh, really? Because I think maybe you have another agenda." Eric releases Stan like he's dropping something crawling with bugs. But he doesn't back away, so Stan has to keep his back against the wall. "Maybe you think starting a war with the Fellowship will distract us from the truth. That you're so starved for power you  _murdered_ Godric for his title."

"That is a lie." Stan is nose-to-nose with Eric at this point, unwillingly, but he doesn't look away, doesn't try to slip past Eric, like some stupid or panicked people might try to. "How dare you accuse me?"

He meant it –  _That is a lie._ That was real, that was honest. He didn't kill Godric. And he's honestly offended that Eric said he did.

"Eric." Isabel, bravely, presses a hand against Eric's shoulder. "We don't know this. There's no proof."

"Not yet. But I will find it. And when I do . . . there will be no mercy."

Then, in a move that seems to make the air weigh half as much, Eric steps back. "In the meantime, you two can stand here and quibble over his position. Or run into that church and kill them all – I no longer care."

I want to be back in Jessica's room, comfortable in her armchair, talking about toilet water with Hoyt.

Eric spins away from the vampires. Back to me. Back to the door. The room key has found its way into his hand. "If Godric is gone . . . nothing will bring back what I have lost."

He slides the key into the slot on the door handle. It beeps. He opens the door, grabs a handful of my shirt, and hauls me inside. He's never that rough with me if I'm not in trouble. But these aren't normal circumstances.

He pushes me away from him as the door closes us in far-too silent room. "Go to bed." There's no ferocity in his voice. No emotion at all.

"Eric, wait – please, I'm sorry."

He stops, already halfway to the bed section of the room, but he doesn't face me.

I lick my lips. "I have to tell you. Stan meant it. He didn't . . . He didn't do anything to Godric. I know you might not think I'm right, and I understand that, but . . . I'm sure."

Eric doesn't move for a long time. Half of me wants to slip into my room, close the door, and sink to the floor. The other half wants to throw my arms around Eric. But I just stay still.

"Go to bed, Annika."

He moves forward again, not even glancing back. And I slip into my room, close the door, and sink to the floor. I lean against the bed and wring my hands until my skin is burning and my tendons ache.

. . . . .

It's not that it hurts so much. It's that it won't stop. The storm in my chest. The vicious, tear-apart-the-village sort of storm.

I'm pacing again. The television is on, I turned it on hours ago, and I hear it, but I can't tell you what the show or movie is about. I haven't even looked at it in a while. I hoped it would distract me. It hasn't.

_It won't stop._

Eric isn't sleeping. If he were sleeping, he'd basically be dead, and I wouldn't be feeling what he's feeling like I am. All the fear, all the pain . . . And I know I'm only picking up a fraction of it, and that makes things even worse, because it means he's suffering more than I can imagine, and that's  _not supposed to happen with Eric._ Eric is not supposed to be afraid, Eric is not supposed to be . . .  _helpless._

But this vampire Godric is his maker. And that means so much, and I can't understand . . .

_You stupid little human._

I'm wearing pajama bottoms and a tank top. The top dips low under my neck, leaving a gap of bare skin for my hand to rub over. My palm is heating up, I'm pushing it back and forth over the skin so fast, but it helps with the feelings. Somewhat. As if I'm working to free the storm from my chest, give it an opening to fly through so it can go find someone else to keep awake.

It's never been like this before. I've never felt things this strongly for this long. My first few nights living in Fangtasia were uncomfortable, because I wasn't used to being so close to so many people feeling, thinking, wanting so many things, and it was overwhelming. But I adjusted. I learned to block all of them out, until I could do it without even trying.

But this is  _Eric_. Humans are simple, humans are weak, and I do not  _care_  about humans. But Eric . . .

_It won't stop._

My fingers slip across my chest. Slip . . . My fingers? Not my palm? I hold my hand in front of my face. The light of the television plays against a dark substance on my fingertips, making it shine.

Naturally, the door to the next room opens within seconds. Eric stands there, still fully dressed. His eyes take in the blood on my fingers. "What are you doing?"

I look from my hand to my chest, where there's a dark streak across my skin, with three ragged lines at its center. Tiny rake-marks, oozing blood. "I didn't mean to."

"Annika –" He's at my side before I know what's happening, holding my shoulder, teeth clenched.

"I didn't mean to! I'm sorry, I was just rubbing it, I didn't – I don't know when I started –" I swallow, dry-mouthed, as Eric crouches in front of me. "Eric, I can feel how – how  _worried_ you are, and it's a lot, and, I don't know, I – I just . . ."

He wipes the blood from my chest with two fingers and licks them clean before extending his fangs. He presses his thumb against one until he draws his own blood, retracting them as he smooths the blood over the scratches. I didn't realize they hurt, but they did, and as Eric's blood does its work my body relaxes a little. But then the only thing my brain can focus on is the feelings again. Eric's feelings. Still trapped in my chest, still twisting and flaring and tormenting me.

Eric stands. "I'm booking you a flight. Now. This is your last day in Dallas."

He disappears into the other room, and I sit on the edge of the bed, running my fingers over my perfectly healed chest and secretly, desperately wanting to dig my nails into it again.

. . . . .

Eric returns ten minutes later. I haven't moved.

"You have a flight at eight-forty this evening."

I nod. I think I nod. I try to.

"This is not a punishment. But there is no reason for you to be here anymore, especially not when you are this miserable."

"I'm sorry, Eric."

"Stop apologizing," he snaps. I take handfuls of the bedspread on either side of my legs. "You do that too much. It makes you seem weak. That is not you."

I want to cry. No, that's not right, of course I don't  _want_  to. But the tears are trying to fight their way out, and I can't even say for sure if they're tears for my own feelings or for Eric's or for both.

The television is still on. Playing an advertisement for band-aids designed especially for children.

"What can I do?" Eric says, speaking softly. Softer, at least. "Is it better when I am here or in the next room?"

I want to tell him it doesn't matter. That I'm no child, that I can handle my problems regardless of where he is or whether he is helping me.

But I'm really tired.

"When you're here," I whisper. "When we're talking. It distracts you and it distracts me, so . . . I don't feel as much."

He nods and goes into my bathroom. He comes out with a black hand towel. Of course. It's daytime – he'll have the Bleeds. "Lie down."

I crawl to the head of the bed. Eric turns off the television. I slide under the bedspread, burying my shoulders and my face into one of the overstuffed pillows. This is a queen bed, far bigger than I'm used to, big enough for me to get lost in. Eric settles beside me, about a foot away, propped up against the pillows. A rush of strange anxiety rolls through me, like an ocean wave over a toy boat, and I shiver.

Even as he stares ahead, Eric reaches over and begins to stroke my hair. "What do I have you reading now?"

 _"The Republic._ Plato."

"Close your eyes."

I do.

"What do you think of it?" he asks.

"I think Plato's wrong about a lot."

"Tell me."

"I know you don't care about that right now."

"I said tell me."

So I do.

. . . . .

"Could I have an iPod?" I'm asking him some time later, my eyes still shut. Twenty minutes may have passed, or maybe an hour. I dozed two or three times, so I'm not certain about the time. I keep waking up with a start.

Eric's hand runs the length of my hair, like it has a hundred times now, from my head to the small of my back. "What made you think of that?"

"I . . . I listened to Jessica's." Which is a very stupid thing for me to say, because it marks the second time in twelve hours I've decided to deceive Eric about something. I owe him better than that, always, but especially today, with him hurting so much and being this kind. But I can't take it back now. "I liked it. All of her music. I'd never heard some of it before. I want to listen to more songs like that."

A moment passes. "Yes, you may have one. Remind me when I am back in Shreveport."

"Thank you."

"I would not get it for you if you did not deserve it. You are an almost absurdly well-behaved child. You should be rewarded for that."

I open my eyes. Aside from stroking my hair, I don't think he's moved. Well, no. The little black towel is bundled in his hand. He's had to have been wiping the blood from his face. It's too dark in here for me to see him well, and I'm happy for that. I know what he's feeling. I don't need to see it played out in his expression.

"Eric. How old will I be when you turn me?"

"Twenty-one or so."

"Jessica's only seventeen and she was turned."

"Her circumstances were unfortunate."

"It's just . . ." I shift a little, so my head isn't sunk quite so deeply into the pillow. "I'll be more powerful when I'm a vampire. In every way. I'll have more control over my abilities."

"That will happen with age regardless."

"But it might happen sooner if I'm  _turned_ sooner. I could help you more."

"Annika, I have never put the sort of pressure on you that you put on yourself."

My mind tugs me back to the night before last, to when we returned to this room after our first meeting with Stan and Isabel. I see Eric standing above me with his teeth bared.

_Useless._

"The other night . . ."

Eric's hand freezes at my shoulders. "I told you I did not mean what I said then. I will not apologize for it again."

"I didn't . . ." I press my face back into the pillow and sigh. "I wasn't asking you to."

There's only silence between us for too long, and then his hand continues down my back, and he speaks in a gentler tone, the tone I love from him. "I am not worried that you will prove to be anything less than a good investment. One of my better ones. You should not worry, either. There is no rush in turning you. I have gone centuries without having a psychic vampire at my disposal. I do not mind waiting one more decade." He glances over, startling me a little. "Close your eyes or I will leave."

I obey.

He starts to speak in Swedish.  _"Think of the farm."_  He knows me well. He knows how much I love the farm, how much I love Sweden, how much I miss it sometimes.  _"It is a clear night. The air is cold, but you are wrapped in a thick coat . . . You are warm. You are safe. The sky is filled with stars . . . The world is silent. Peaceful. All is well for you . . . Nothing can harm you."_

I also really love Eric.

_"Look at the stars."_

I sleep.

. . . . .

**A.N.: The songs belong to Hank Williams and Garth Brooks, respectively.**


	12. Terminal

For a while when I was little, I went through a phase where I was terrified of storms. Because of this, Eric began to take me out to the farmhouse's porch whenever one was approaching. He wasn't cruel about it. He let me sit on his lap, he kept an arm around me, and eventually I didn't mind storms anymore. I even started to like them. They're quite beautiful, really. Anyway, it was during this time when I first heard the phrase "the calm before the storm." Eric explained it to me. I thought it was fascinating, both for what it actually was and for what it meant as a metaphor. That quiet moment before everything blows up. The stillness before the fight begins.

And now, as Eric's voice comes through this greasy payphone receiver, that old phrase echoes through my head:  _The calm before the storm._

"You didn't get on the plane?"

I close my eyes. Tiny droplets of water slide over my eyelashes. I cry when I'm angry. Also, I've been worried out of my mind for over an hour now, and my chest feels like a wringed-out wet towel. Which I think is a fair reason to cry, too.

"No." I turn my back to the airport terminal, not wanting any strangers to see my face, because this is private, and because if one more adult gets it in their head that I'm a lost little girl I might blow up. "I knew something bad was happening. I was frightened –"

"You should be  _far_  more frightened now, girl."

I wrap my free arm around me.

"For the second time in less than a week, you have disobeyed me. I thought the first time was a fluke. Clearly I misjudged the situation.  _Clearly_ I should have had a firmer hand in dealing with that!"

_I have a great many things on my mind at the moment, dear. Do I have to punish you for this?_

_No. I won't go in the basement. I'll do as you say. I promise._

"Do not think I will make that mistake again," Eric tells me, venom in each word.

At which moment some part of me evidently decides that life is not worth living, because I hang up on him.

All the other parts of me, naturally, regret that immediately and scramble to pick the phone back up. But, of course, all I hear at that point is the dull, bored dial tone.

_"Damn it."_ I press my hands into my eyes until they buzz and I see stars explode, waiting for the phone to ring, even though I'm not sure if payphones work like that. Even though I know Eric would prefer to deal with me in person.

Two or three minutes pass without the phone making a sound. I don't know what I'm hoping for.

"Excuse me?"

I wipe my hands over my face and turn around, chin up, to see a middle-aged woman wearing a business suit and lipstick that's far too pink. "Are you done with that?" she asks.

I grab the handle of my suitcase. "It's the twenty-first century. Get a cell phone." I stomp past her before she can reply.

There is no shortage of chairs, but I've always been fond of sitting on the floor when I'm upset, which is why I end up cross-legged in the loneliest corner I can find. The wall I lean on is glass, like so many airport walls are, because people love to watch planes take off. One is taking off right now. I imagine there are at least a few children on it who are doing exactly what their parents or guardians requested they do. How nice for them.

Godric is alive. He was in the custody of the Fellowship of the Sun, but Eric and I guess some other vampires and Sookie, somehow – Eric, shockingly, wasn't generous with the details – got him out. And, as Eric put it, they ensured the Fellowship would no longer be a problem.

But it was not simple and it was not painless. Eric told me nothing beyond  _There were a few complications, but they were overcome._ I wouldn't have thought twice about it, except for the fact that in the mere two hours since Eric dropped me off here, I have been all over the place with unexplainable fear and anxiety, the kind that only lucky, lucky psychics like me can truly understand, I think. It wasn't unlike what I felt last night, before Eric helped get me to sleep, but it wasn't identical – I wasn't feeling what Eric was feeling tonight; he was too far away for that. I was feeling my own feelings. But I knew they were about him. I just knew.

More than once, I thought I heard him cry out in pain. In my head. It hurt me.

And so I called him a hundred times on the payphone. I kept running out of quarters and having to go make change by buying candy bars I was too nauseous to eat. And Eric didn't answer for a long time. His phone kept going straight to voicemail, and all I could do was keep calling and calling, until finally,  _finally_  he picked up, and told me he was alright, told me the crisis was over, and realized that I never left Dallas. Which is when the conversation took a turn for the worse.

I had heard my flight number called early in the ordeal. I knew what Eric would have told me to do. And I didn't do it. But when you're panicking over the current state of the person you love most in the world, the last thing you want to do is get on a plane and disappear into the clouds thousands and thousands of feet above the city where you last saw him.

And honestly . . . Honestly, I just wasn't thinking. I was just scared.

And now I'm just pissed.

And also still kind of scared.

And crying. Crying, alone in a corner of a busy airport, with planes I'm not on taking off into the night.

. . . . .

I don't hear him, but I know when he's here. Even before he speaks.

"I certainly hope the airport plans to upgrade to better payphones soon. It appears our call was prematurely cut off."

To this point, I've had my arms wrapped around my legs and my head resting on my knees. I wipe my eyes one more time before I straighten, swallowing and staring at Eric's leather shoes. "If you're going to hurt me, please just do it and send me home."

"The worst thing I have ever done to you is put you over my knee,  _once_ , for what could barely be classified as a whipping. And you speak of me hurting you as if it is a favorite hobby of mine."

I would not have hesitated to classify that particular instance as a whipping, but I probably don't want to start that argument. That was the time he caught me lying to him. Which, that's right, I've started doing again, after five years of pure honesty. This has not been my best week.

"I'm not sorry I didn't get on the plane," I say.

"Oh, really?" For someone who told me a short while ago that I apologized too much, he doesn't sound very pleased with this stance.

"I'm not. I thought – no, I  _knew_ something bad was happening to you."

"And you believed disobeying me would be helpful?"

"I thought there was no way I could sit still on a plane for two hours like that, feeling like . . ." I touch my chest, where there should be scratches. "I can't . . . take this."

"Don't be so dramatic. That's what I have Pam for."

"I'm not being dramatic!" I shout at his knees. I clap my hand over my mouth. A family of four all turn their heads my way before the mother leads them to different seats. I close my eyes and two fresh, hot tears slip out. I duck my head, dig my hands into my hair. "You don't get it. What it's like. I can't make it stop sometimes, the – the reading, and the feeling. Like last night – last night, with you – You feel more strongly than I'm supposed to, Eric, maybe because I'm young, maybe because I'm human, but I – I can't take that, and I can't take – what was happening tonight, knowing something bad was going on, not being able to – to stop it, or to stop feeling it, I can't – I can't  _take it_. And I don't  _want it_  sometimes. I just don't want it." I cover my face with my hands and fight back a sob. I hate crying. It makes me angry, and that just makes me cry more.

Eric says nothing for a while.

Then, "It will get better as you get older, sweetheart."

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do. I've done my research. In the meantime, when we're back in Shreveport, I will speak with Dr. Ludwig about a drug prescription. Anxiety medication of some sort."

"Medication? This isn't a disease, it's magic!"

"Lower your voice."

I stop talking entirely, shaking my head and squeezing my legs into me again.

A moment later, something heavy falls across my shoulders. Eric's leather jacket. I pull it around me, even though I'm not cold. Sometimes it's nice just to bundle up in something. Eric crouches in front of me and brushes a strand of hair out of my eyes. "If I could make it easier on you, my dear, you know I would."

"You could turn me."

He rests his hand on my shoulder. It's heavy in a good way. "I am doubtful that you becoming a vampire would automatically grant you greater control over your abilities. Not to mention that I like you far too much to condemn you to eternity as an eleven-year-old."

My eyes travel up his arm. He's wearing a racerback, so I can see his bare shoulder. There's a faint pink stripe running across it, a stripe made up of crisscross shapes. It's a mark from a chain. I look at his other shoulder and see two more stripes of the same kind. "The Fellowship silvered you."

"Yes, they proved quite inhospitable. But I'm nearly healed."

"How did they get you? How did they get Godric?"

"It doesn't matter. They will not be a problem for us anymore."

I almost ask if they're all dead, but I don't really want to know. I hook my hand on Eric's arm. He feels the way he should feel again. Meaning that I can barely feel him at all. He's just strong, unreadable Eric. And it's a relief. "Eric. Please don't put me on another flight tonight."

"Oh . . . What happened to hurting you and sending you home?"

"You were sending me home because I was miserable. You've found Godric, so you're okay, so I'm not miserable anymore. But I'm tired, and . . ."  _I don't want to be alone._ "Please just take me back to the hotel. I'll stay with Jessica while you do . . . whatever else you need to."

Eric thinks for a moment, his thumb tapping lightly on my shoulder. "No."

"Eric, please –"

"No, I'm not taking you to the hotel." He sighs. "I am taking you to Godric's."

"What?"

"The house we were at the other night. A gathering is forming there to celebrate Godric's return . . . He's asked about you."

"About  _me?"_

"You are of interest to him." Eric doesn't look happy about this. He doesn't look unhappy, either, but . . . he's far from thrilled. "It's possible he will want to meet you. I am not certain of it, but . . . I should give him the opportunity. I doubt it will be a party fit for a child, but it is a large house. I'm sure there is a room where you can spend the evening."

That doesn't sound exciting, but meeting Godric does. Well, exciting and intimidating beyond imagination.

Eric rises and offers me his hand. "Come."

I let him pull me to my feet. "Are you still angry with me?" I can't help but ask.

He gives me a long look, the kind that makes me feel even smaller than I am.

"Just get on a plane the next time I tell you to get on a plane."

"I will."

His voice dips. "And never, ever hang up on me again."

"Yes, Eric," I whisper.

With that, he takes my bag in one hand and my shoulder in the other. I'm still wrapped – well, engulfed – in his jacket, but he doesn't ask for it back. Which is good. I'm nervous, and it makes me feel safer.


	13. Godric

The farmhouse in Öland has a library where I used to spend a lot of time. It isn't a particularly large room, only about half the size of the bar area of Fangtasia, but it's lined floor-to-ceiling with books from everywhere in the world. Eric liked to spend some time there, but he had a separate study he worked in, and he was gone a lot, anyway, so the library was mostly my place. I had an entire wall that Eric let just be mine, I had a window seat with a fantastic view of an open field with no trees to block the stars above. I miss it.

Godric's library is better.

It's no bigger – it may be slightly smaller, in fact. But walking along the shelves, my hands clasped behind my back, I see books upon books that must be hundreds of years old, some of them in languages I don't recognize. Just sitting in someone's house like normal light reading. And they're cared for – there's not a dusty spine among them.

The library, as a whole, is like something out of an old English novel, and out of place in this otherwise modern house. There's a giant wooden desk in front of a wide window at the end of the room and two overstuffed burgundy chairs sitting across from one another on an ornately decorated rug in front of a fireplace. There is no overhead lighting, only two lamps on either side of the desk, both of which glow a warm yellow and cast plenty of light to see by, but still leave enough shadows in the room for the space to feel like a nook meant be hidden in. Which maybe it is.

I'm trying to make out a long title written in French when I hear someone speak, in an accent I can't place, "You are welcome to anything that catches your interest."

There's a pale, dark-haired man standing in the doorway. He looks no older than twenty. He's dressed in a simple white outfit, the sort of ensemble that looks casual but which costs hundreds of dollars – the kind of thing Eric would wear. And he's a vampire, of course. There are dozens of people in the house at the moment, and very few of them have heartbeats (I count two or three – I feel them moving through the crowd across the house like warm-blooded fish through ice water). But the creature in front of me isn't just another vampire, that's clear immediately. I inch back from him, in fact, and not out of fear, really, just – well, uncertainty, I suppose. Maybe a little awe. Awe I can't exactly reason out.

"Eric told me not to touch anything," I say.

The vampire's lips tilt upwards, almost too slightly to notice. "I will assure him I gave you permission."

And then I understand.

"You're Godric."

"I am."

I start to cross my arms but stop myself. I didn't anticipate meeting Godric without Eric here. I've never had a one-on-one conversation with a vampire who wasn't Eric or Pam or a tutor, and, as far as I know, there is no protocol for meeting the two-thousand-year-old maker of the vampire who raised you.

"I am not what you expected," says Godric.

I pause. "No." There was no logical reason for me to assume that Godric would at least look older than Eric, but I did. And, even though the size of the vampire has virtually nothing to do with his or her power, I nonetheless did not imagine Godric would be shorter than Eric, too. It's just – when you spend your life believing that someone is, for all intents and purposes, the most powerful being in the world, and then you find out that there is someone who surpasses him, you expect that person to be rather . . . grand. And Godric has brought a certain weight into the room, no doubt, but he's still small in stature and looks like he could be in college.

Well, not entirely. His eyes. His eyes are older.

"I'm sorry," I say after a minute. "I'm being rude. It is a pleasure to meet you."

That makes him smile for some reason, and his eyes lower to the ground. "And you as well. Eric has told me you are quite an impressive child."

I fold my hands together. "My abilities are developing rather quickly. I can read humans fairly well. And sometimes vampires. Not excellently, but I'm getting more powerful as I get older."

"Yes, he's told me as much, but I wasn't referring to that. I meant that he says you are brilliant."

Which leaves me without words, so I look at my hands, hoping the dim light will hide the blush flooding my face, but also all too aware that vampire sight is a bit too strong for that to be likely.

"I apologize for leaving you waiting so long. There are many here tonight who wish to pay me their respects, and I found it difficult to get away."

 _I apologize._ Two-thousand-year-old vampires are not supposed to apologize to eleven-year-old humans. Eric will occasionally tell me he's sorry for things, but that's normally for circumstances out of his control, not because he actually regrets doing anything, and on the rare occasions when it  _is_ actually something he regrets – like the other night, after he yelled at me – I know he does that to make me feel better, not because he actually feels obligated. I doubt he apologizes to other humans. I doubt most vampires would apologize to any human.

And here is maybe the most powerful vampire in existence, apologizing to me. And it is, frankly, confusing.

"I just sent Eric on an errand," Godric says, "so it seemed like the opportune time to come to you. I thought it might be preferable for us to meet without him present. He can be . . . domineering." He gestures to the armchairs. "Please."

I sit in one of the chairs and he sits in the other, resting his hands in his lap instead of on the armrests. The lamps are behind him, so his face is cast in shadow, but that seems appropriate, somehow.

"I am very sorry for what the Fellowship of the Sun did to you," I say, even though I haven't the slightest idea what that was.

"They treated me quite well, actually. The experience was . . . enlightening."

I study him. His lips keep tilting up, so I suppose he keeps smiling, but it's a strange sort of smile. When most people smile, it's not just with their lips – their eyes light up, too, and sometimes crinkle at the edges. Godric's eyes – I can see now that they're blue, like Eric's, like mine – don't do either of those things. His eyes don't smile. Like I said, they're old, but it's more than that. They're just sort of sad.

No, wait – there. There was a bit of a spark, faint, as if candles were lit inside his pupils. "Are you reading me, child?"

"No. I can't read you. I can barely read Eric, unless he's very . . ." I don't want to say  _upset_. "Agitated. You're far beyond my reach."

He's quiet for a while. Eric does that – pauses for too-long moments in the middle of conversations. Maybe it's something that all old vampires do. Maybe they realize that they have forever and there's no rush to things. Or maybe they know that they're stronger than virtually everyone else and they can generally behave however they please.

But, because of Eric, I'm kind of used to waiting. So I do so patiently.

"I remember when he began looking for one like you," Godric eventually says. "Or at least, when his interest was piqued. It was in the mid-nineteenth century. We spent some time in Chicago with a nest of vampires led by a man who was, in his former life, a general under Napoleon Bonaparte. A genius, in his way. He had at his side a vampire with abilities similar to yours. Not quite as wide an array, if what I understand about you is correct. But he was impressive. A bit of a Seer, with some telekinetic ability, but above all else a pyrokinetic. Are you familiar with that term?"

I nod, realize that may not be respectful enough, and say, "Yes."

"As an infant, this vampire had an unfortunate tendency to start fires, and his family nearly killed him as a result, thinking him some spawn of the devil. But the former general heard of the child and was intrigued. He took him and raised him within the nest, allowing him a safe place to grow and develop control over his gifts. And then, once the human was grown, the general, of course, turned him. As was always the plan."

I wonder if that vampire had to wait until he was twenty-one.

"It was not, even then, unheard of for vampires to raise human children," says Godric. "But it is uncommon enough that this was the first instance Eric had ever seen in person. He was fascinated by the dynamic between these two. The bond between a vampire and his maker is, as he may have told you . . . remarkably strong. But this, in a way, went even beyond that. It seemed almost as if that bond had combined with the devotion a human child feels to its parent. Which makes sense, I suppose."

 _Yes, it does._ I stare at my hands. I know that a vampire and his or her maker are supposed to have a connection like no other, but I can't imagine loving Eric more than I already do. Still, if – when – he turns me, and I finally understand that special connection, that doesn't mean that what I feel now will go away. I've never thought so, at least. So what I feel for him once I'm a vampire of his making, well, that will just add on to what I already feel for him.

Which means I will be feeling a lot. To put it quite, quite simply.

"So Eric, who had not yet become a maker, began to consider looking for a sensitive human of his own, a child he could keep to adulthood, someone whose loyalty could be ensured beyond all doubt, not just by a supernatural link beyond anyone's control, but by something . . . more organic."

Eric never told me that. Eric never told me any of this.

"I tried to talk him out of it," says Godric, so casually you could mistake him for a stranger making small talk, not as the most important person in the world to the most important person in  _my_ world telling me that he nearly told that person never to get me. I swallow – gulp.

And Godric notices. "Forgive me, little one. You must understand – I did not see things quite as I do now. I thought it unnatural to so closely associate with humans. But . . . I have begun to reconsider many things as of late. And it is clear to me that Eric is quite pleased with you. No harm has apparently come from the arrangement."

"Nor will it," I say, surprising myself.

A little light reaches Godric's eyes again. "I do not doubt you."

I rub my palms over my jeans. They've gotten clammy. "What happened to him? The pyrokinetic vampire?"

The light in Godric's eyes dies. "His ending has nothing to do with what yours will be."

My mouth goes dry. "You mean it ended badly."

"It is not important."

"Please."

Godric hesitates. Eric would scold me for pushing any vampire for information they were reluctant to give, because vampires are dangerous, and because Eric has a certain image to uphold and that image involves keeping strict control over his human. And this vampire is Eric's maker, so chances are he would be especially displeased at me prodding him.

But Eric isn't here. And this is important.

"From what I understand," says Godric, "he disappeared from the Chicago nest about a decade after Eric and I met him. He was lost to his maker for some time. But, in the year 1871, a particularly populous vampire nest on the East Coast was utterly destroyed by a fire that was soon attributed to him. And then, days later . . . he returned home."

To Chicago.

_1871._

"The fire," I whisper. "The Great Chicago Fire?"

Godric says, just as quietly, "You are indeed a bright girl."

"Was his maker still there?"

"Yes."

"Did he meet the True Death?"

A hesitation. "He was not heard from again. Neither of them were."

I stare at the fireplace. The logs inside are untouched, just waiting for that to change. Perhaps if I focused hard enough. Why not? Godric said it himself, and he heard it from Eric, who had it on good authority when he purchased me – I have an array of abilities sleeping inside of me, just waiting to manifest.

_Along with what else? Madness?_

"I have upset you," Godric says. "I am sorry. When I began that story, I had no intention of relaying that part to you. That vampire was but one of many with such gifts whom I have known over my long life. Most of them were quite normal."

 _But were they as powerful?_ I want to ask.  _Could they have set an entire city on fire?_

I clear my throat. "I'm not upset," I tell the dark fireplace. "I'm glad you told me. Eric tells me very little about these things."

"It is likely I have overstepped. The fact is, I have very little experience with children. What they should and should not hear is lost on me."

"It's alright. I'm not like most children."

"No. I imagine not." He turns to look at the doorway, and, as if in a magic trick, Eric appears.

He strides forward, eyes darting briefly to me before connecting with Godric's. "Did she bother you?" he asks in a tone that suggests punishment will be swift and severe if the answer is yes.

"She did not. I came to her. She is good company." He smiles at me before rising. "Is it done?"

"Yes, he's been dispatched. I told him not to stop driving until he reaches the Mexican border."

I can't imagine who they are speaking of, and I know better than to question Eric in front of others. I have different things on my mind at the moment, anyway. Like fires. Like the way Eric is looking at Godric.

In the past few days, I have felt Eric's emotions far more than I would have liked – horrible, gut-wrenching, devastating emotions. But I felt them because they were so strong . . . because they were about Godric. And now, as I look at him standing here with Godric, his emotions reach me again, as powerful as ever, but so, so different. Warm, and fierce, and bright – too bright for me to handle. I twist in my chair and take a deep breath, clasping my hands to each other. I don't look at Eric again. What he is feeling is wonderful, truly, and it makes me happy. But it's like I told him at the airport. I am not built to feel things to the extent that he does. Not even the good things.

"I must return to the party, Annika." I look up at my name, into Godric's eyes. They're calming, maybe because Godric is so far beyond my abilities that he shuts them down. Maybe just because I like him. "I hope we will speak again soon."

"As do I."

With that, Godric heads for the door, and Eric follows, though he looks over his shoulder at me and, after a second, winks. Then I'm alone again. I could rise and search through the books some more, but I seem to have lost the energy, or the will, or some other driving force within me. It's been smothered by a fog of dread that I don't think comes from anywhere outside of my body, outside of my mind. I think it's just . . . me.

I turn to the fireplace again, rest my head against the back of the chair, and think.


	14. Rattled

If you've ever been standing in a room you think is empty only to hear a footstep or a sigh from behind you, just before someone speaks and proves you're not alone after all, you can understand the basics of how I feel in the seconds leading up to the explosion at Godric's house.

I say "basics" because I doubt the level of fear is the same. Or anywhere close.

I'm sitting cross-legged on the floor of Godric's library, where for a long time now I've been staring at the logs in the fireplace and trying to set them on fire with my mind – something which, as far as I know, there is no written process for. So essentially I've just been thinking really, really hard about flames and sparks, and getting nothing for my trouble. But all my focus has been on this possibly hopeless task, which I think is why the dread – dread like a cold, sopping wet quilt – is so late in hitting me.

Or maybe being a psychic, particularly such a young one, is just a really unfair game sometimes.

I'm opening my mouth to scream for Eric – which should be enough to tell you how certain I am that something awful is about to rain down on us, because he would never tolerate me doing that in a nest of vampires for anything short of an emergency – when the house leaps into the air with a  _BANG_ that hurts my ears. I flatten on the floor without thinking about it, my arms over my head, before my brain and body grasp that, whatever's happened, it happened on the other side of the house. At the party. Where Eric is.

The  _BANG_ is still ringing through my ears when the screams start to come, too. And the moaning.

Something tears itself apart inside of me, then plummets, and I shove myself to my knees, then to my feet, because  _Eric is hurt._ It might as well be engraved on my heart.

To the door.

I move against the wall of a long hallway, the sounds of suffering – some of them more animal than anything else – getting louder with each step. A terrible smell wraps itself around me, and I know it's some kind of smoke, but it's metallic and like nothing human nostrils are supposed to take in. I reach the end of the hall and look out at the room I sat in just two nights ago, when Eric paced behind me and Isabel and Stan fought over the fate of the godlike vampire who is supposed to be safe now.

Blood and gore cover the walls and bodies cover the floor, scattered among and on top of expensive, broken, charred furniture. Everything is some shade of red or black. Those who are on their feet are either looking around with wide eyes – dry and wet – or moving through the room, bending to those sprawled on the ground on top of or under debris. Through the thin smoke, I see Isabel doing this, checking a person snapped over half of a couch before moving to someone still sort-of moving under a split sidetable nearby. Her hair is done and I'm sure she looked lovely, before she was covered with ash and globs of flesh.

I don't see Eric.

One shaky step forward puts my weight on something that does not feel like floor. I jump back, look down. There's a hand at my feet, palm up, a ring on its index finger. No arm attached. Blood oozes from the wrist . . .

Someone appears in front of me so suddenly I almost cry out, but I recognize him before the breath can leave my lungs. Godric is relatively clean-looking, but his white clothes will still never be wearable again. His hands cup my face. With his icy skin against mine, I can tell in a far-off way that my face is hotter than it should be. "This is nothing you need to see, child."

"Eric –  _Where's Eric – ?"_

"He is hurt, but he is healing." Godric sounds like a narrator in a movie, his voice so calm over all the groaning and crying and shouting for help and for people. But his eyes . . . If I thought they were sad before, I was wrong. There's something so much deeper inside of them now. "I am sure he will come to you as soon as he can. Return to where you were."

But that's not something I can do, because I can  _feel_ Eric close by, I can feel echoes, shadows of pain that I know belong to him, and I can't just leave him there, wherever he is, in the middle of all this –

"No," I tell the two-thousand-year-old vampire who could crush me with his thumb, who is the only person whose bidding I have ever seen done willingly by my thousand-year-old guardian, the same guardian whose fury would know no bounds if he saw me defy his maker like this. The guardian who is only steps away,  _somewhere,_ hurting, the guardian I would do anything for. "No, I have to –"

It isn't like when Eric runs me somewhere. It isn't even like being carried. It's like blinking and then being somewhere new – in this case, back in the library, sitting in one of the armchairs. Godric places his hands on my shoulders. "Please do not come out again. Eric would not want it." He disappears, sending a breeze through my hair.

I'm left alone in a strange room, listening to horrific sounds and still smelling that unnatural smoke, with an ache inside of me, Eric's pain fighting for my attention.  _I'm here, you fool._   _Something is wrong. Don't you care?_

I slide from the chair to the floor, hugging my knees for the second time tonight. That only lasts a minute or two. Then I rise and begin to pace. It feels wrong at first, forced, but I like the version of me who walks back and forth like Eric, like a damn lion in a cage, better than the one who sits sniffling on the floor. So I be a lion.

Which is how Eric finds me not even a half-hour later, when he enters the room splattered and stained with blood but, as far as I can tell, healthy.

"I'm okay," he says as soon our eyes meet. I go to him, shaking my head.

"I'm so sorry," I say, voice trembling. Body trembling.

As a rule, Eric isn't a man of great physical affection. With me, he mostly leaves it at small touches here and there, resting his hand on my head or shoulder, things like that. He will hold me on the rare occasions I'm really upset, like he did the other night, after my nightmare. But we certainly don't hug a lot. And that's not something he would want seen by the strange vampires who are close by now. He's not someone who should be seen doing something as soft as giving a hug to a human child.

But I don't always have the self-control I wish I did, so I end up with my arms around his waist in spite of knowing better. And Eric, to his credit, briefly puts one hand over my back and runs the other down my hair before nudging me away.

"I'm so sorry," I say again, gripping his wrists as he holds my shoulders. "I didn't sense anything until right before, and it was too late, I'm sorry –"

"Do I look like I am angry with you?"

He doesn't. But he looks bloody, and his shirt is torn in a few places. "Eric, what happened?"

"I will explain at the hotel. Godric and his people are reconvening there. Come." He scoops me up.

This isn't the same as hugging, so it's okay to wrap my arm around his neck. "How bad were you hurt? Are you healed enough to fly?"

"Well, dear, one of us has to."

With a jolt, he takes us into a blur of colors and sounds. I press my face into his chest as the wind attacks my skin and the temperature drops, and, after just a moment, I feel the earth disappear from beneath us. We're hurtling through a silent darkness, and truly, it's the most peaceful I've felt all night.

. . . . .

The staff at the Hotel Carmilla obviously do not have protocols in place for things like this. So, as two dozen vampires covered in different degrees of gore crowd around their lobby, speaking quietly to one another or shoving their way to the front of the crooked line formed in front of the main desk, everyone with a uniform and a nametag – even those who are undead themselves – are clearly fighting to keep their calm. The blonde vampire receptionist working on finding space for everyone has lost the stark-white grin she's always had, up to this point, when I've seen her. Her bun is starting to loosen, too, little strands of hair falling in front of her face like they've given up on trying to look like all is well. From my place on a couch across the room from the main crowd, I've seen more than one bellhop – generally humans – walk a wide arc around any vampires in their path, eyes down, mouths clamped shut so tightly their lips are no more than lines. These are people who are used to vampires, who signed up to work with them. But they probably didn't imagine they would have to deal with a party's worth of them post-explosion.

I still don't know what happened, exactly. Eric said he would tell me at the hotel, but he set me here as soon as we arrived, told me not to move, and went to Godric's side, where he still is, speaking quietly with him. Well, to him, mostly. Godric will murmur something now and then, but his eyes don't leave his people. He looks so calm, but somehow, that's not the same as being relaxed. Not in this case.

Eric turns suddenly, his attention caught by something out of my view – something at the hotel doors, I think. He steps forward as Sookie and Bill appear, on an obvious path for the elevators on the other side of the flood of vampires in the lobby. There's someone else with them – a male human, blonde and muscular.

All three of them were at the gathering – I can tell from their dusty, spotted clothes and dirty faces. Sookie looks exhausted.

Eric moves into their path, speaking words I can tell are quiet even from across the room. Sookie is hanging onto Bill's arm, Bill angled so he's in between her and Eric. After a moment, Eric glances my way, causing Bill and Sookie to do the same, and though Bill quickly turns back to Eric, Sookie's eyes linger a moment.

A familiar wave of  _something_  vibrates over me as I look into her eyes, a wave so gentle I can barely sense it, but it's there. Something's different. Something's changed about Sookie. Within her.

She says something to Bill, who looks at her, then at me, then at the ceiling, then at Eric again. He speaks. Eric nods once before beckoning me over.

"You are going to stay with Bill and Sookie for a while," he says when I reach him.

"What will you be doing?"

"Assisting Godric. I shouldn't be long." He might have given me more information, and even if he hadn't I might have asked him, but so much changes between us when we're with other vampires. He's not my friend quite so much. "Make sure she eats something," he says to Sookie before meeting my eyes and lifting his eyebrows, just barely. I nod just as slightly, and he leaves, striding back to Godric in a manner too calm for the hectic room.

"Come," Bill says to one in particular, and the four of us – Bill, Sookie, me, and the strange blonde man – walk around the clumps of vampires to the best of our ability and enter the elevator. Bill punches a button. The doors close us in, and we're trapped in that strange sort of elevator silence.

Then, from my left, the man I don't know says, "I'm sorry –" He looks at Sookie over my head, pointing at me. "Uh . . . Who is this and why does Eric Northman the vampire need you to watch her?"

"This is Annika," I say, clasping a hand over my wrist in front of me and tilting my head to the side. "And she can hear you."

The man holds up both hands. "Sorry, sweetie, no disrespect. Just . . . confused, is all."

"Annika, um . . ." Sookie swallows. She has globs of red in her pretty hair and her voice is hoarse. "Annika lives with Eric. She's . . . psychic. She helps him. With things."

"Psychic?" the man repeats.

Sookie gives a small shrug – more of a twitch, really. "Annika, this is my brother, Jason. He was . . . well, he was already here, in Dallas. With some . . . friends."

"Well, they weren't – exactly friends, turns out," Jason says.

"It doesn't matter now."

Jason is eyeing me, his mouth hanging open a little. "So, you mean to tell me you can see the future?"

"I can see lots of things."

"And you were at that party?"

"Yes . . ."

"Then how come you couldn't see what was gonna happen?"

"Jason," says Sookie.

"I'm just sayin'! If she can  _see_  things, how come –"

"I don't see  _everything_ ," I say through clenched teeth. "I'm still young. My powers haven't fully manifested yet. But like I said, I see  _a lot."_ I narrow my eyes at him. _"_ Like that you drink vampire blood. Often. More than you should. Probably like a drug – V, isn't that what they call it?"

My gifts can be a burden, they can be painful and scary, but damn if they can't also be fun.

"I . . ." Jason gapes for a bit before gulping and jabbing a finger in my face. "I don't do that no more. I already told Eric, I'm done with all that. Permanently."

"I'll be sure to pass along your enthusiasm." A smirk overtakes my lips before I can stop it or think if I want to.

Sookie touches my shoulder. "Okay, let's just cool down." The side of her hand brushes the bare skin of my neck, and . . . something in me recognizes something in her. That's the best way I know to describe it. Something in me recognizes something in her because they are  _the same thing,_ and in this instant, with her skin on mine, a part of me and a part of Sookie connect . . . because they're both parts of someone else.

I don't think Sookie can feel anything, but she clearly sees something in my face. Her eyebrows come together and her hand lightens on my shoulder, but doesn't leave, as if she doesn't want to be rude. "Annika, what is it?"

"You've had Eric's blood."

And now her hand does leave my shoulder, sliding off like my words crowded it out. Behind her, I swear I see Bill clench his jaw.

"Yes," Sookie says tightly. "Against my will."

"Seriously?" Jason says. I feel a spike of heat from him - it could be anger as easily as jealousy - but I don't check his face, it doesn't matter.  _Eric gave Sookie his blood._

"How could he do that?" I ask Sookie. "Were you hurt? Did he heal you?"

"No, he – It doesn't matter." She smiles. It takes effort. "He's in charge of you. I don't want to speak bad about him. No real harm done, anyway." She twists towards Bill. "Just some . . . silly little thing we're gonna get past. Easy." She takes his hand, and he smiles at her, but his is every bit as forced as hers.

And I can understand that. Eric's blood is in Bill's human. Bill can claim her all he wants, he can scream it to the skies, but there is now a piece of Sookie that will never truly be his. It'll be Eric's. Always.

"Well," I say as the elevator doors slide open, "This could get awkward."


	15. Aware

"Do you know how much Bill Compton doesn't like you?" I ask Eric as soon as the door to our hotel room is safely closed behind us. Eric pauses in the middle of rolling out of his jacket, one corner of his lips tilting up.

"Quite a lot, I would imagine?"

"More than that." I put my hands on my hips as he strips off the coat and folds it in half. At the start of the night, Eric was burned by silver chains, and not long after he was hit with flying shards of silver, but if you judged by just the skin of his arms and shoulders you would think nothing's so much as scraped him in his long, long life. "You need to watch your back."

He looks at me, a grin forming. "Oh. You're adorable when you imitate Pam."

"I'm not –" I drop my arms to my sides. "I'm  _serious."_ I glare at him, until finally his smile fades and he nods a little, draping his jacket over a chair at the table.

"I am aware that I cannot trust Bill Compton." He crosses the room to a black, blocky armchair and lowers into it, sighing. It's the first time I've seen him sitting all night. That isn't nearly long enough to tire a vampire body, but it could still be taxing. Mentally, I mean. "But he is no danger to me, I assure you – and speaking of danger." He lifts his eyebrows. "In all of your eleven years, have I never once explained that if a bomb goes off in your vicinity, you do not run in its direction?"

Godric mentioned that, evidently. Or I suppose Eric might have been able to smell or hear me when I left the library. "I didn't . . . run."

"You didn't run," he repeats, his flat tone telling me that is not a good argument. I wrap one arm around me.

"I knew you were hurt."

"I appreciate your concern for my wellbeing, little one, but I survived nine hundred and ninety years without you looking out for me. I've gotten quite good at it."

"I know you didn't need me, but I just . . . I had to do something." I look at the floor.

Eric answers with a voice that is firm but, thankfully, not harsh. "The best thing you can do for me in a situation like that is to ensure your own safety. Please remember," he adds, softer, "Pam would never let me live it down if I were to bring you home damaged. You cost an obscene amount of money."

Relief trickles over my shoulders, and tense muscles I didn't notice loosen themselves. Eric's teasing, which is wonderful. All that's happened tonight, but he's still in a better mood than I've seen him in days.

_If we hadn't found Godric . . ._

_He would have been fine. Eric's always fine, eventually._

"Maybe, but you've never said how much money that was," I remind him.

"And I never will."

I walk to the couch opposite him and sit, folding my legs under me. "I know you gave Sookie your blood."

"And how did that come up in conversation?"

"It didn't. Well – only after I'd sensed it."

"You can sense when someone's had my blood." He says this to himself more than me, like he's storing it away in his mind. He rubs one set of long fingers together in a circular motion.

"She said you didn't heal her, but she wouldn't say anything else about it." Sookie and I ate dinner together and, honestly, had a nice conversation. She was still shaken, but she asked me about my lessons and what I'm reading and what I want to do when I grow up (though she dropped that subject after I told her I was going to be a vampire and work with Eric). And she explained to me, mostly, what had happened at Godric's. One of the people from the Fellowship of the Sun – one of the few, I understand, who didn't accept defeat – had shown up with a bomb on his chest, and he set it off – a suicide bomber, is what it's called. The bomb shot bits of wood and silver throughout the room, which is why it was able to hurt so many vampires, and kill a few, including Stan (though it's hard for me to believe there is anyone who will miss him). And some humans died as well . . .

I pull myself back to now, to this room with Eric, who hasn't offered any more information. He has that faraway look he gets when he's thinking. "Why did you do it?" I ask.

"You do not need to know the reasons behind everything I do. Or behind most things, for that matter."

"Well, do you . . ." I hesitate.

"Do I what?"

"Do you . . .  _want_  her? Like . . . how Bill wants her?"

"I already have one human in my life for whom I care, and that is one more than I ever intended there to be. I do not have the capacity or desire for a second."

I study him as he leans his head back, eyes closed. I rarely suspect Eric of lying to me. Maybe it's because of how important he thinks it is that I always tell him the truth. I know that doesn't guarantee that he feels the same way about what he tells me, but still. I've never had reason to doubt him.

But – and I don't think this is a psychic thing – I don't quite, quite believe he doesn't care about Sookie. I don't think he cares about her nearly as much as he does me, but . . . he gave her his blood. He hired Dr. Ludwig to heal her. She clearly means something, and maybe that's only because she's a telepath, but . . . I don't know.

Of course, I might be overthinking all of this.

"Well, she doesn't despise you the way Bill does," I say, causing him to open his eyes. "She doesn't like you, but . . . I don't know, it's strange. She isn't scared of you, I can tell that much." Which is rare for any human who crosses Eric's path. "Although her brother is. But he's scared of me, too."

"Does he have a phobia of particularly tiny creatures?"

I roll my eyes – which is okay to do when Eric is relaxed, the way he is now. I'd never dare if he were speaking to me seriously. "No. I don't know why. I just make him nervous."

"I imagine he finds you intimidating. You should get used to that, it will happen often in your life."

"Why? Because I'm psychic?"

"No – assuming that's not something you announce to everyone you meet." He gives me a look that says it better not be before he continues. "You are very smart, you are very pretty, and you were raised by vampires – and one day you will be one. There will be many who do not know what to make of you."

I smile, just a little, and just at my hands.

But Eric doesn't let the warm moment sit. "I have booked you a flight for this afternoon. Don't argue," he says as soon as I open my mouth. "You've already been here one day more than you should have. It is past time you return to Shreveport. Anyway, Nan Flanagan is arriving here tomorrow night to discuss the incidents of the past few days. Things are going to get quite tedious and annoying, you will not be missing much."

Nan Flanagan. She's with the AVL – the American Vampire League, who work for cooperation among vampires and humans. Eric doesn't talk about that much – aside from what it's meant for business, he cares little about the mainstreaming movement – but I occasionally see Nan Flanagan on the television in his office. She's been a spokesperson for the AVL ever since the Great Revelation, and, with her flat voice, white skin, and sharp blue eyes, she looks like you could just touch her and freeze over forever.

I'm certain I wouldn't enjoy meeting with her, and I'm even more certain I wouldn't be required to. I know there's nothing more for me to do in Dallas – there barely ever was, really – but it still seems like too much is happening for me to want to leave. "Godric said he hoped we would speak again soon."

"You are both going to live forever," Eric says. "There is no rush." He tilts his head down, peering at me through his eyelashes. "There will be a driver waiting for you downstairs at three-o-clock. Can I trust you to meet him on your own, or do I need to be up to see you off?"

It's difficult not to squirm under that look. "You can trust me."

He holds my gaze for another second, then inclines his chin. I relax. "Pam will pick you up from the airport," he says. "I expect to be back at Fangtasia in a few days. Please refrain from killing each other during that time."

Now it's my turn to give him a look. "Exactly how would I go about killing Pam?"

His lips twitch. "Very well, please refrain from provoking Pam into killing you. It would take her quite some time to reimburse me. Debts are hazardous to relationships."

"I wouldn't dream of doing that to you."

"And that is why I like you."


	16. One Word

It's dark when the plane lands in Shreveport, of course. Otherwise Pam wouldn't be the one picking me up.

"You know," she says as I near her, my suitcase rolling behind me and people rushing around greeting each other with hugs and laughter, "When Eric first told me he was buying a kid, he promised me  _emphatically_ that it would never be my responsibility. And now here I am, a decade later, playing the part of chauffeur-slash-nanny for  _you_. Again. Clearly I need to remind Eric of the original terms of our arrangement."

"I missed you, too, Pam."

. . . . .

That first night back at Fangtasia is uneventful, but my tutors come the night after, both eager to make up for lost time. I'm almost through my French lesson when a lump of pure unease blooms and settles in the pit of my stomach as fast as a bubble pops. I pause mid verb-conjugation and, well, feel the feeling.

It concerns me. And I have no idea where it's coming from.

I finish up my lesson, all but brushing my teacher off until he leaves in an effeminate huff, at which point I begin to pace, studying this lump in my gut. It's vague, undetailed. There are no strings attached, no pointing arrows, no clues whatsoever to tell me what in my world is making me feel this way.

But I know, from experience, the sort of things that tend to. The people who tend to.

For the first time in months, I find myself in the bar area of Fangtasia during its actual working hours. The music, always audible in my room, is so loud out here that I wince, but the rush of feelings I get as I scan the flashing dance floor and all the scantily-clad, sometimes costumed customers is a welcome distraction. Such a crowd would have been far too much for me to handle when the bar first opened, but now I can push back enough of what floods towards my brain and heart to actually enjoy the waves of excitement I get from these drinking, writhing humans.

If I had thought to start counting as soon as I entered the scene, I would have, just to know exactly how long it took Pam to appear in front of me. I would estimate less than five seconds. Glaring through thick black eyeliner, looking grand in a dark leather outfit with sweeping sleeves (I'm told human customers love a good cliched vampire look), she herds me through the EMPLOYEES ONLY door and into the back hallway I just came from. "This better be good," she says. I'm not supposed to be in the bar during hours of operation. I doubt Pam personally cares if I am, but her maker does.

"Have you spoken to Eric tonight?" It's difficult to hear myself over the music without shouting, but Pam's hearing is far better than mine.

"No. He's busy helping Dallas with that bitch Nan Flanagan. Why?"

I'm tempted to say  _Never mind_ , walk away, tell myself I'm being silly. But the unease is still heavy inside me. If it were just my imagination, this feeling wouldn't have appeared out of nowhere like it did. And of the two people in the world I love, one is in front of me, perfectly healthy and safe in our home, so the only other reason I'm likely to be feeling this worry is because of the one who is not. I have no definite idea where he is.

"I think something's wrong," I say. "With Eric. Or, around Eric. I have a bad feeling."

All impatience vanishes from Pam's face. Earnest is a better, if unfamiliar, look for her. "What do you mean?"

"I sense something. Something is . . . I don't know, Pam, just . . . would you call him? Please?" He's more likely to answer a call from her personal phone than the club phone, because he knows a call from the club phone would be a call from me.

_And what important thing could I possibly have to say?_

_No. Now is not the time for bitterness, you insecure child._

Pam pulls her phone from some hidden pocket and moves past me, heading for Eric's office. I follow her. She shuts the door behind us, phone already to her ear.

"Eric?" she says within seconds, relief rushing her features. I lean against a cabinet, allowing myself a fresh breath of air. "Yes, I know you're in the middle of something. Sorry. I don't suppose you happen to be in some sort of imminent danger?"

The feeling in my stomach. It's still there.

"Good to know. Why do I ask?" She looks pointedly at me. "Because your psychic got all antsy."

I hold out my hand. "Let me talk to him."

"She wants to talk to you." Pam listens for another second, then, "Fine." And she hangs up.

It's all I can do not to stomp my foot. "What –"

"He's busy. He says he'll call you later if he has time."

"Pam! You don't –"  _You don't get it._ That's what I told Eric, isn't it? When he found me on the floor in the Dallas airport two nights ago? And I was right, he didn't. Pam doesn't. And I've always known, on some level, that they don't, that they can't, but that fact seems to be proving itself truer and truer every day. And do you know how lonely that is? To have such a fundamental piece of you, something you are at your  _core_ , be unexplainable to the only people you care about? The very  _few_ people?

I swallow. The unease is creeping up my ribcage like ivy. It's becoming tingly – threatening to morph all the way into anxiety. "Pam, I can't explain it, and I know it's hard for you to believe, but something is wrong."

"Eric says it isn't."

"Eric isn't psychic! That's why he had to buy one!"

The phone is still in Pam's hand. She rubs her thumb over it, frowning. "He said he's busy, Annika." But her voice isn't so unrelenting now. "He's a big boy. He can take care of himself."

I huff out a breath, not knowing what else to say.

"Here." She goes to Eric's desk and retrieves an orange pill bottle from the top-right drawer. It's the same place he keeps my EpiPen, in case I somehow eat strawberries. "Eric had Dr. Ludwig call in a prescription for these. Anti-anxiety meds. The good stuff."

When did he even have the chance to do that? I close my eyes, ridiculously furious with Eric – for being so good to me, for always taking care of me, and then not letting me do the same for him. "I don't want them."

"Of course not. Why feel better when you could, you know – torture yourself with preteenage angst?"

"If you and Eric won't listen to me now," I say, working to keep my voice calm, "then I'm not going to take anything that might prevent me from picking up something stronger later. Something that maybe you  _would_ listen to."

Pam grimaces, slamming the bottle back into the desk. "Fine. I tried." She walks to the door, and there isn't a tense bone in her body, but right before she steps out, she says, "Let me know if anything changes," in a voice that isn't so careless.

. . . . .

And something does change. But not until it's too late to do anything, if anything could have been done at all. It changes when I've almost completely convinced myself that my mind is playing tricks on me, that I'm still tired from the trip, that I miss Eric and that's why I have the bad feelings. It changes when I'm in bed, wrapped up in the darkness of my windowless room while dawn, I assume, begins outside.

This is when I find myself falling out of bed, tripping over my blanket and my feet to get to my bathroom, where I crash to my knees so hard my bones vibrate and I heave out everything my stomach has to offer. Because there is something toxic in me, and my body wants it out. My body, my poor body, doesn't understand that it's nothing I ate, it's not even something physical.

The toxic substance, the poison tearing me apart, is the most gripping sense of terror I have ever known. A bottomless hole of loneliness, combined with an earth-shattering sorrow that weighs me down so much I sink until I'm flat on the cool tile, whimpering.

Every now and then, living with vampires who have super-hearing proves to have its benefits, and my cheek has barely touched the floor when someone bursts into my pitch-black bathroom. "Annika?" Pam says with more concern than she should have – she's seen me sick before, why should this bother her so? Oh, oh, but I suppose she's never found me lying on the bathroom floor like a corpse, has she? Her hands latch onto me, one on my arm and one on the back of my head, and oh, I could kiss her, because those hands are like ropes looping around me and pulling me against gravity, against the black, preventing me from swirling deeper into this pit . . .

"Annie . . . What the hell?"

I didn't realize I was crying, but when I speak, sobs keep wrecking my words like waves against shabby ships. So I have to focus.

"Eric. You have – to call –  _Eric."_

. . . . .

I sit on the couch in Eric's office, rocking back and forth like some broken child's toy, my bedspread wrapped around me and overflowing onto the floor. Pam, prepared to go to ground in dark pants and a cream-colored blouse that look far more comfortable than the outfit she wore for work, has  _not_  gone to ground, even though the clock on the wall says it's past six-thirty and therefore past sunrise. If I wasn't certain, the trickle of blood Pam just wiped from beneath her ear is proof. But she has her phone against her other ear. "Eric," she says for the fourth time. Fifth time?  _What does it matter?_  "Annika's freaking out. Call me." She snaps the phone closed. Again.

I lean over my knees, pulling the blanket halfway over my head.

"Don't you dare throw up in here." The fact that Pam still has the mind to say that is a good sign. The fact that her voice has a tremble to it is not.

"Keep calling him," I whisper. A whisper is all I can manage – all the bad feelings have formed a wall inside of me that holds back a lot of things, like volume and, at times, oxygen. "Please. Keep calling him."

"He's probably in bed." Pam's shoes make no sound against the cement floor, but I know she's pacing, because her voice travels back and forth above me as I stay here, with my head down in the nice shadow beneath the blanket. It's blue, this blanket. My favorite color. Eric knows this, which is why he got me the bedset I have. "A ringing phone won't be enough to get him up. He's dead, for all intents and purposes, you know that."

_For all intents and purposes._ Not really dead, not truly dead, no, not Eric. Never never never.

_How easily you lie to yourself. Eric would be so disappointed._

"I’ve had his blood, Pam." Is that my voice? That croak? "He knows how I feel. I'm feeling . . . awful, and that should wake him up . . . Unless he  _can't_  wake up . . ."

"Oh, stop! You damn drama queen! You think  _you're_  tuned in to him, you little Magic 8-Ball? He's my  _maker_. I would  _know_  if –"

"I had a bad dream."

_Does Pam need to hear this?_

_Probably not._

"Eric said it was a bad dream, at least, but I told him it was a vision. At least at first, I thought it was a vision. Eric was on a rooftop in a city. A city like Dallas. The sun was coming up . . ."

Pam stops in front of me. I see the tips of her white shoes. "Listen, Princess. Eric Northman did not meet the sun. I. Would. Know. There is  _nothing_ that could make him . . .  _Ugh._ "

Her shoes disappear from my view. I hear the wooden, angry clatter of a drawer opening. "You're taking one of these damn pills." She's beside me the next moment, touching my hand. Without meaning to, I grasp her wrist. And I just hang on for a while.

Eventually, after two seconds or an hour or something, Pam removes my hand and presses something tiny into my palm. She squeezes my wrist before letting go. I look at the little white capsule, I'm not even sure why, before I toss it into my mouth and swallow. I should drink water. But water isn't within reaching distance, so fuck it.

_You wouldn't be feeling this if he were dead. You would just feel empty._ But I don't know that for sure, do I? Maybe some part of my mind, some deeply buried part, has already figured out that Eric is somehow gone and now that part is busy alerting the rest of my body and that's what all these feelings are. Or maybe not. Maybe Eric is alive and well. Maybe these are  _his_  feelings, crossing over state lines to get to me, oh, but why? What could have happened? What could destroy him like this?

_What could destroy both of us like this?_

_DING-ding-DING._

I lift my head at the sound of Pam's phone. She's already opening it, staring at the screen. That jingle meant a text, not a phone call.

Pam goes very still.

"Pam? Pam, is it him?"

After a moment, "He's alive." But she's not grinning. She doesn't look happy or relaxed or anything. Her eyes are getting red and full.

"Pam?"

She presses a hand over her mouth and holds the phone over the desk. I manage to get there. I take the phone. I look at the screen.

It's just one word. There isn't even punctuation. There are certainly no details or stories. But that one word, written in all-caps, is enough for me, like it was for Pam. One word explains everything.

**GODRIC.**


	17. Grief

I've never lost someone I loved before. I had a nanny who died of a stroke when I was little, and I remember being sad about it, but she was just one of the dozens of humans who entered my life for weeks or months and then left forever. She had just left differently than most. And a few years ago Eric told me, when I asked if he kept track of my mother, that she had been killed when I was four or so in what he called a  _home invasion_. I had tried to be sad about that, too, but I couldn't really manage. She had never been a part of my life. She sold me, for God's sake.

I didn't love Godric. But someone I love loved him, and that would be enough, I think, to hurt me even if I were normal. But I'm not. I have a magical connection to Eric that is currently feeding me only  _some_ of what he is feeling – and even that is beyond hurt. It's brokenness.

Eric doesn't return the night after Godric's death, which is a blessing. The closer I am to someone, the more I can pick up from them, and if Eric wasn't a state away on the morning Godric met the sun – as Eric eventually informs Pam he did – I don't think I could have withstood his loss. I didn't sleep that entire day, even though I took a second dose of my new medication. And the meds did help, no doubt – I didn't throw up again, I didn't claw at my skin like a crazed animal . . . The emotions weren't too much to bear, is what I'm saying. The drug couldn't keep the feelings out, but it seemed to put a thick, muffling coat over them so they weren't quite so loud. But they were still there, oh, God, yes. And they made me cry. More than once.

It's the second night after when Eric comes home, arriving only a few hours before dawn. "What do I say to him?" I asked Pam when she told me he was on his way.

"Absolutely nothing. You don't even  _breathe_ at him unless he speaks to you first."

I wanted to ask her if she was going to be doing the same thing, but I knew that wasn't fair. Pam and I are very, very different people to Eric. She's going to do what he needs her to do, and – even if what she said was harsh – I know she was just trying to help me do the same. I took the pill she offered me then – she won't let me keep the whole bottle – and locked myself in my room. And now, as I feel Eric come home, bringing his heartbreak with him, I don't move. Well, yes I do. I slide from the bed to the floor and fold my arms over my head. But I don't leave my room. Dawn comes without me hearing from him.

I sleep a little.

I'm calmer the next evening, which tells me Eric is calmer. That doesn't mean he isn't still grieving, of course he is, but the . . . the  _passion_  of it has gone down. The passion of his stronger feelings has always been the reason I could read Eric when I could read him. Like when a match catches fire, and in that first instant it erupts like the wild thing fire ultimately is, but then it calms down into a smaller, almost harmless looking flame. The match is still burning, the fire is still hot, but it's not as loud about it.

In other words, Eric is still hurting, and I can still feel some of it, but I'm feeling even a smaller fraction than I was originally. And I hate myself, hate myself, hate myself for being relieved at that, because Eric is still suffering, and it's not fair that he feels all of that all alone.

But I can't help it.

I don't eat breakfast, even though, for the first time since Godric's death, I feel like I could keep something down. I just don't want to run into Eric. But after a pulse starts to run through my walls and faint music creeps past my closed door, I know the club has opened for the night, and that's my best chance to go for food. Eric is the type to throw himself into work. I wouldn't be surprised if he's already on his throne, offering himself up to whatever distraction comes his way.

But I step out of my room to see that the door next to mine is open and the light is on. I go still.

Then, without deciding to do so, I'm walking into the doorway, and I cannot even begin to explain why.

Eric is behind his desk. He looks paler than he should, but that's really the only thing that seems off about him. His hair is styled and he's wearing one of the dark t-shirts he favors on nights he doesn't plan on making an appearance in the bar. He lifts his eyes from a file when I press against the doorframe. "I was beginning to think you were never going to come out of your room . . . Did you even eat breakfast?"

I shake my head. Waves of something heavy, grey, and cool keep rolling into me as I look at him, but they aren't unbearable. Not for me, and, evidently, not for him.

"Eat something."

Now I nod, just once, and dumbly. I'm the one who came to him, and I should therefore say something. But Pam told me not to. Also, I have absolutely no idea what to say. Why am I here?

Eric studies me. His next words are gentle, which is wrong for so many reasons. "You can have one of your pills if you need it."

God, Pam must have told him about my reaction. Told him about some of it, at least. I hope she left out the part about throwing up. About the sobbing. For me to totally break down, psychic or not, when the tragedy wasn't even mine . . . I don't want Eric to know about that.

"No, I'm okay," I say, which is sort of true. I feel better than I've been feeling. Of course, I feel  _guilty_ about that. But at least that emotion is my own, not that of a one-thousand-year-old vampire. It's like I told Eric before – a young human girl is not built to hold up under the emotions of people like Eric. People who are essentially gods.

Eric flips over a sheet of paper and scans something. But even as he does he says, "Everything is fine, Annika."

And because he's Eric, he makes it sound like it is. Even though it is so, so not.

My feet, once again, start moving without asking my mind if it's okay. I walk across the room, feeling Eric's eyes on me but not meeting them. I walk around his desk. I still don't look at him. He swivels his chair towards me. I wrap my arms around his neck and hold on.

After a moment, his hand covers the back of my neck, and his arm curls around my waist. He presses his head against mine, sighing into my hair.

We stay like that for a long time, and then, pulling back from him, I again avoid his gaze. I leave him to his work. He doesn't stop me.

But, after eating an entire meal, I return to my room and am finally able to sink into a sound sleep.

. . . . .

I wake up with someone sitting on the end of my bed. The fact that the person is perfectly visible, even glowing, despite the pitch blackness of my room should alarm me, but it doesn't. The fact that, as I raise up, the person turns his head to me and reveals himself to be Godric should alarm me even more. But, again, it doesn't. It seems perfectly natural, because my brain recognizes immediately that it's impossible and therefore must be a dream. And dreams can be absurd.

I check the clock on my bedside table. Eleven in the morning. I've been asleep for over twelve hours. I'm still in jeans and a t-shirt. I push myself up and cross my legs. Godric waits politely. "This is a dream," I tell him.

He smiles that barely-there, sad smile. "I suppose it could be."

It must be. But I'm glad I'm dreaming about him. I can't see him for real, and I'm not sure I would be brave enough to say all the things I have to say to him if he were actually in front of me. But in a dream? Oh, certainly.

"No vampire could have made you meet the sun. You might be the strongest vampire –" I catch myself, lick my lips, and start again. "You might have  _been_ the strongest vampire alive. No one could force you to do that."

"Very few people."

"You did it to yourself." I didn't realize how sure I was of this until now, hearing it spoken out loud. Pam hadn't said it, Eric definitely hadn't said it, but it's the only thing that makes any sense. And it is  _infuriating_. And unfair. And Godric, dream Godric or imagined Godric or ghost Godric, doesn't argue. "How could you do that? How could you do that to Eric?"

_Please,_ I'd heard Eric beg, in that terrible vision I so wish I had made him believe were real.  _Please._ With red tears pouring down his face . . .

"He loved you," I snarl. "How could you leave him like that? Do you even know how it's made him feel? And  _why?_ Why did you do it?"

Godric doesn't speak or look at me for a long time. When his eyes rise to mine, I see centuries and centuries of wisdom, life, death, love, hate. I can't feel a thing from him. But I see so, so much. And understand none of it.

I stare back at him. It should be intimidating. It isn't. This isn't like our one meeting, when he was alive. He's dead and we're not strangers now. We've crossed into something far more personal. He's in my head.

And I'm suddenly so, so certain of something.

"You weren't sorry you told me about the Great Chicago Fire. About the vampire who started it. The pyrokinetic." Of course he wasn't. How could I have ever believed that? As if he could possibly let something like that  _slip._ "You wanted me to know. You were . . . warning me."

"You have been given a very unfair burden, Annika Northman," the dead vampire at my feet says. "One that I have seen others try and fail to carry. You need to understand just how heavy it might prove to be."

I take handfuls of my bedspread. My throat is closing up, which pisses me off, which helps nothing. "You think I'm going to go mad, is that it?"

"No. I think that people with power like yours are more  _susceptible_  to madness. As I said . . . I have seen it. All too many times."

_More susceptible to madness._ Does he think that sounds better?

_It's not him. It's you. Little fears in your head, playing themselves out . . ._

Godric settles his hand a few inches from my knee and leans forward, but doesn't touch me. Maybe he can't. "I listened to Eric speak of you. He cares for you. More than he would admit, perhaps even to himself. But he gave you his name. You are his. No matter how your abilities expand, he will help you hold onto yourself. He will fight for you." He pauses. "But I fear he may need you to fight for him as well."

"Eric doesn't need anyone to do his fighting for him," I snap.

"Even the greatest warriors rely on loyal allies. I cannot appear to him, you know. Or to anyone else I may have wished to speak with. Perhaps one day, but . . . just you for now."

"You aren't appearing to me. This is a dream."

One of his eyebrows lifts, just slightly. "You've never heard of a spirit appearing to someone within a dream?"

"I don't believe in spirits."

"You are very gifted, little one," he says quietly. "I suggest you start believing in spirits now. Or they may make for quite an unsettling surprise in the future."

I swallow. My tight throat aches at the movement.

Godric's eyes search me for a while. I don't know what he wants to find. I don't know if I want him to find it. Finally he says, "Look out for him. I know you think you are too small, too human. But I assure you, you are not. Keep him close . . . It might save both of you."

I let out a long, shaky breath. "This  _is_  a dream."

Godric seems to sigh. He lowers his eyes to the floor.

Then I'm staring at the wall.

"A dream."

_But you're sitting up in bed._

I probably just did that.

Probably.


	18. Epilogue

A few days after Eric's return, I find myself in a situation I am not comfortable with.

Now, please remember - in Dallas, I slept in a hotel filled with vampires. I attended a business meeting with vampires, then a social gathering with way, way more vampires. Not to mention that I live in a nightclub that is run by vampires (who, incidentally, raised me) and which probably brings in at least a dozen vampires every night. And, having lived the life I have, none of that frightened or frightens me. I know vampires. I'm  _comfortable_  around  _them_.

But put me in a room with two other human children, and I'm at a loss.

The room is mine. His name is Coby and hers is Lisa. They both seem to be close to my age - maybe a little younger. He is blonde, she is redheaded. He's fascinated by this place, and she's a little curious, but mostly just anxious. And they're both worried about . . . something. Someone. (They're also both barefoot. And their feet are far from clean. But I am trying very, very hard not to worry about that.)

This is all I have gathered – from a little talking, but mostly from reading them – in the two minutes since Eric knocked on my door and told me to be a good hostess to these two while he spoke with someone he called Mr. Merlotte. The Mr. Merlotte in question, a man with grey-brown shaggy hair, looked over Eric's shoulder as Coby pulled his sister into my room, and he opened his mouth to say something, but decided against it. Eric left my door open, but I heard his office door close a minute ago. Now Coby walks around the edges of my little room, looking at the pictures on the wall, while his sister stands by the door, holding her elbows.

"You really live here?" Coby has a drawl so thick it almost sounds like he's faking.

"Yes." I'm sitting on the edge of the bed. Sitting. Right. "You can sit down if you would like," I tell Lisa, waving to the table in the corner. She gives the tiniest of smiles and sidesteps over to sit in one of the chairs, half-hiding her face behind its back as she watches her braver brother continue to explore the one patch of personal space I have in the world.

"You don't got no windows," he says.

"Vampires live here. Windows aren't good for vampires."

He points to a print of a winged woman sweeping over a battlefield, sword in hand. "Is that Wonder Woman?"

"That's a valkyrie. They serve the gods. And choose who lives and dies in battle."

"My preacher says there's just one god."

 _And my guardian says there are none._ "Is Mr. Merlotte your dad?" As soon as I ask, a switch is flicked inside of me, and I'm sure he isn't.

"You mean Sam? Our mama works for him." Lisa tilts her head against the chair's back as she speaks to me. "But somethin's gone wrong in her."

"Her eyes went black as raisins." Cody stands on his tiptoes to examine a music box I keep on my dresser.

"Sam's helpin' to fix her," says Lisa, and then, after a pause, "Is Vampire Eric your dad?"

"No. Vampires can't have children – please don't touch that." Coby's hand found its way up to my music box, which I brought with me from Sweden, is inlaid with gold, and may cost more than anything Coby's ever touched before. Plus, it was a birthday gift from Pam. I wait until Coby's hand is safely at his side again, with him sucking his lips in like they might touch something, too, before I continue. "Eric . . . got me when I was a baby."

"You mean like he adopted you?" Lisa asks.

"There's a kid in my class who's adopted," Coby says. "His skin's dark but his mama and daddy are real white. Almost like vampires. Whoa! Is that from a movie?" He moves in close to a picture of a stone castle on a green hill – but he keeps his hands off, so I answer him politely.

"No. That's a castle along the Rhine River – that's in Germany. And . . . no, Eric didn't . . . adopt me, like that. That's not how it is with us." I fold my hands in my lap and straighten, inclining my head. "It's  _better_. Because he treats me more like a grown-up."

"So you ain't got no mama or daddy?" Coby's finally looking at me, his interest in my room apparently gone. Now it looks like I truly am his main source of entertainment.

"Don't ask that, dummy," Lisa hisses. "It ain't good manners."

"I've never needed parents," I say. I asked Eric once, when I was very little – it might be one of my first memories – if I had a father. He said I didn't, but I had an Eric, and that was better. I've always thought that was probably true. "I have a great life. Eric takes care of me. He buys me lots of stuff I want. And I don't have to go to school."

Coby's jaw drops. "Ever?"

I shake my head. "Not even for a day."

"Wow." Coby glances at his sister. "Wish we got to live with vampires."

I look between the two of them. These kids should be my peers. We should have things in common. We should know the same games, like the same movies, have the same friends, want the same things. But . . . school, and bedtimes, and church, and playgrounds, and afternoon picnics, and  _mamas_ and  _daddies . . ._ That's just never been my life.

My life . . . My life has been darkness. Blood. Violence. Always thinking before I speak. Vitamin D supplements. Comfort from cold hands. Breakfast at nightfall. Reading old books in empty rooms. Long walks through fields beneath a glowing moon. Swedish lullabies. Lovely dolls in lace dresses. Discussions on philosophy. Music through my walls. Mani-pedis. Late-night diners. First-class flights and fancy cars. Magic. Power. Safety. Trust.

Yes, my life has been darkness. And people find darkness so frightening, because you can't tell when bad things are hiding in the dark. But good things can hide in the dark, too.

"Like I said." I smile, just a little. "I have a great life."

The words are barely out of my mouth when I hear a muffled click from outside my room. Eric's office door. He's in my doorway the next second, sweeping the room with his eyes. "Oh, good. You're all alive."

Mr. Merlotte steps around Eric – but keeps his distance. "Coby, Lisa." He waves the kids out of the room. "C'mon. Time to get you back to Bon Temps."

I rise as Lisa and Coby pass Eric. Coby arches his head as far back as it can possibly go to get the best look at my guardian, and only moves along when his sister yanks him by the arm. I stand beside Eric as Mr. Merlotte says, "You got my cell number if you find anything out."

"I'll let you know if I learn anything of use to you."

Eric then looks down the hallway, to where Pam waits beside the door leading out to the bar. She looks at our guests like they're the first signs of a rat infestation.  _"Can I throw them out now?"_ she asks Eric in Swedish.  _"I hate the little ones. They're so stupid."_

I'm not sure I want to hear what Pam would say if I pointed out that  _I_ am as little as Coby and Lisa are, so I just say,  _"I don't think they're stupid."_

Lisa and Coby both gasp. "You speak Spanish?" Coby says, eyes wide.

Eric looks to the ceiling, smiling like the gods he doesn't believe in have given him a great gift, as Pam gives me a smirk beyond compare.

I sigh. " _Never mind."_

"Pam will see you out," Eric says, expertly pulling back his amusement. He winks at Coby and Lisa and says, pleasantly, "Goodnight, tiny humans."

Coby just stares at him, head tilted and mouth still open. Lisa grips Mr. Merlotte's hand. "C'mon, kids," the man says, putting a hand on Coby's back to guide him down the hall.

"Bye, Annie!" Coby calls back to me. Eric introduced me using my nickname – some humans get confused with the name  _Annika._ "Hope you keep not havin' to go to school!"

"Bragged about that, did you?" Eric asks as we watch the three humans follow Pam out the door.

"It came up. Who was that man? What did he want?"

"He is Sookie's boss. He wants to know how to kill a monster. Something called a maenad."

I blink. Sookie works in a bar in Bon Temps. I don't know why the owner – or manager, maybe – of a bar would need to know how to kill a monster. Well, assuming that owner or manager wasn't, say, Eric or Pam. "Do you know how to kill it?"

"I might know someone who does. And I will visit her later this evening." He looks down at me. "Come. I have something to give you."

I follow him into his office, wary. It's not like Eric to give me gifts. Oh, he buys me things all the time, or has someone buy them for me, but he usually doesn't go to the trouble of being secretive in any way.

"What did you think of them?" Eric asks, as if the thought just occurred to him. He glances over his shoulder as he moves around his desk, where he settles in his chair. "The human children? With their mundane little lives?" He waves a hand at one of the two chairs in front of his desk, so I sit, hands in my lap. He pops an eyebrow. "Do you think you missed much?"

"I didn't speak to them for very long," I say slowly. "I'm not like them, I know that. And I don't want to be, I suppose." I shrug, look at him, look at the floor, and say, "I'm glad I'm yours."

He doesn't reply right away. I keep my eyes down. I  _am_ glad I'm his, and I  _do_ want him to know that, but – saying things like that out loud to Eric is sort of like hugging him. It's just not something I'm supposed to do often. I don't know who made that rule or why I know it, but I do.

Finally, he says, "I promised you something." I hear him open a drawer, and I lift my eyes as he slides something across the desk. He takes back his hand to reveal a blue iPod, thinner than Hoyt's, with a screen twice its size. A pair of black earbuds is already wrapped by its wires around the iPod's base. "It's the newest model," Eric says as I pick the device up, trying not to smile too hard. "It can hold more songs than I imagine you have ever heard. I have downloaded some music onto it that I think you will like. You may use my computer later this evening to search for more." He pauses. "Well? Is it as good as Jessica's?"

And my heart drops.

This isn't right.

I reach to set the iPod back on the desk, and then I lower my head. "I can't take it," I whisper to my shoes.

Eric, after a moment, answers in a way I could almost call cautious. "Why not?"

Maybe I could have let things be if he had given me this gift before Godric met the sun. But no – he's giving it to me after. After I saw and felt him hurting worse than I ever thought was possible. After night after night of watching him get back to business, push on with his life, even though the pain, the  _grief_  was always right under his calm surface. I never would have believed, a week ago, that I could love Eric more than I did. Respect him more. But after Dallas . . . somehow I do.

And, my God. This is a vampire who lost his maker  _days_  ago, but somehow remembered he told me I could have an iPod. And got it for me.

I don't want to be breaking his rules. I don't want to be betraying his trust, not even in some tiny way. He deserves better.

I take a deep breath. Grip the seat beneath me. "I lied to you."

There's a long silence, during which my mouth goes dry.

Eric gives a long, long sigh. "About what?" His voice is too controlled. Like he has to fight the words to make them sound calm. It scares me.

I run my tongue around my mouth once before I speak. "Jessica's boyfriend Hoyt came to see her. That night you left me with her. It was his iPod I listened to, not Jessica's. I stayed in the bathroom while they were together."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Jessica asked me not to." My voice is getting higher. No,  _no._ If Eric can control his voice, I can control mine. "Well, actually, she paid me not to – or, Hoyt did. Jessica thought if you knew, you might tell Bill, and she didn't want him to know."

My hair hangs down around me. The ends are vibrating, because I'm trembling.

_This is better. No matter what, this is better than never telling him._

I push forward. "It was – it seemed like such a little thing, so I hid it from you. But I know hiding things is lying. And then I really did lie about whose iPod it was, and I – I'm sorry, Eric, I know you hate being lied to."

"Indeed." And then Eric stands up.

I close my eyes as he walks around the desk, slowly, the sound of each footstep filling up the room. I feel it when he comes to a stop in front of me.

"The last time you lied to me, I dealt with you quite harshly."

My stomach twists.  _It was just a spanking. It was hardly the worst thing he could have done._

But . . . it sort of seemed like it at the time. I was only six. And it hurt. Once it was over, I lay sobbing on my bed as Eric rubbed my back with a touch so suddenly gentle it was almost ridiculous, and when I finally calmed he said,  _Believe it or not, little one, I do not like causing you pain. But I also do not like being lied to. Especially by you._

"The reason I was so severe," Eric says in the present, his voice low and nowhere near as kind as it is in that memory, "is because it is extremely important that I never doubt your word. As you grow older, as you grow more powerful, I expect I will be making pivotal decisions based largely, or even solely, on what you tell me. And I must be able to trust you, Annika. Completely."

I force my eyes open. "You can."

"So you say . . . I realize you were quite young. But do you remember what I told you after the last time?"

_And now I must make you a very unfortunate promise, sweetheart._

"You said . . ." I take a second to bite my lip, as hard as I can without breaking skin. And it still might break a little. "You said if you caught me in a lie again, you would make that punishment seem like a dream."

Six-year-old Annika had started crying again at that. Eric had hushed me, said he didn't want that to happen, and it didn't have to.

But I've blown it.

"Precisely," Eric says, almost too softly to hear. "And I meant it."

There's a solid lump rapidly forming in my throat, and I swallow twice and squeeze my fingernails into the chair. I don't want to cry before he even . . . does whatever he's going to do.

_It's better this way. It is._

My heart feels like it's too high. My eyes are starting to burn.

"If I  _caught_ you," Eric says. "I did not catch you. You are telling me."

He holds out the iPod.

Slowly, slowly, I take it, but as soon as I look down at the thing Eric's finger is on my chin and he's bringing my gaze back to his. His eyes aren't angry. But they're sharp. "Do not do it again," he whispers, and, because he's Eric, he manages to make that one-part threat and one-part compassionate warning.

"I won't."

He holds me there for another second before dropping his hand and starting back around his desk, taking his time. "I will be leaving shortly for my meeting with . . . well, you don't need to know that. I may not be back before you are asleep." He lowers himself into his chair with a sigh. "But tomorrow evening, I expect you to be prepared to have a  _full_  discussion on  _The Republic._ The rants you engaged in while you were falling asleep that night at the hotel, while amusing, do not count."

I nod. It's the best I can manage.

He jerks his head toward the door. And that's it. Just like that, everything is fine.

I stand, my new iPod safe between my hands, and walk across the room.

"Annika," Eric says I reach for the doorknob. His eyes are narrowed. "How much did they give you for staying in the bathroom?"

I clear my throat. "Well, they offered me twenty dollars at first. But . . . I bumped it up to thirty."

Eric's smile stretches across his face, bit by bit, until his teeth are showing in a crooked grin. He reaches for a pile of papers on his desk. "That's my girl."

**End of Part One**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, guys. I truly appreciate it. There will be a Part Two.


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